Conciliar
Byzantine rite · Byzantine · 1 work
The Byzantine rite, the family of liturgical services proper to the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Greek-Catholic Churches, took its mature form in Constantinople and was carried into the Slavic world through Church Slavonic translation. Its services do not depend on a single book but on a system of loosely coordinated volumes, each supplying a different part of the worship. At the center stands the Eucharist, served chiefly in the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, with the longer Divine Liturgy of St Basil the Great appointed about ten times a year and the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts on Lenten weekdays. Around this eucharistic core runs the daily cycle of prayer, the canonical hours sung from Vespers and Matins through Compline and the Hours.
The principal service books divide the texts among the clergy and the chanters. The Euchologion is the priest's and deacon's book, corresponding roughly to the Western Missal and Ritual; it contains their prayers and litanies for Vespers, Matins, and all three Liturgies, together with the sacraments, blessings, and occasional prayers. The Horologion supplies the fixed portions of the daily hours used by the reader and choir, while the variable hymnody is distributed across the chant books. Together these volumes allow each rank of worshipper to follow services whose changing parts shift day by day with the calendar.
The variable texts are governed by two overlapping cycles. The Octoechos, attributed in origin to St John of Damascus, arranges the weekly offices in an eight-week rotation of musical tones, while the Triodion covers Great Lent and its preparatory weeks and the Pentekostarion carries the season from Pascha to Pentecost. The twelve volumes of the Menaion hold the offices for the fixed feasts of the Lord, the Theotokos, and the saints across the months of the year, beginning with September. The interweaving of these books, regulated by the Typikon, gives the Orthodox office its distinctive richness and its considerable length when fully observed.
Isabel Florence Hapgood's Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church, first published in 1906 and revised thereafter, was compiled and translated from the Old Church-Slavonic service books of the Russian Church and collated with the Greek books. Undertaken with the backing of the Holy Synod of Russia and the encouragement of Archbishop Tikhon, it gathered into one English volume the Divine Liturgies, the daily offices, the sacraments, and the chief occasional services, with explanatory notes. Its purpose was to make the beauty and meaning of Orthodox worship accessible to English-speaking readers and usable in public worship. The translations presented here follow Hapgood's 1906 rendering.
Sources: Catholic Encyclopedia (New Advent) — The Rite of Constantinople (Byzantine Rite) · Catholic Encyclopedia (New Advent) — Euchologion · Encyclopedia.com — Byzantine Liturgy