Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/596

580 ody. 580 eunuch, who seems to have officiated as conductor or director of the church musicians. This led to the suppression, by an imperial edict, of all public Arian singing ; while in the church the practice of nocturnal hymn-singing on certain solemn occasions, thus first introduced, remained an estab lished institution. Greek It is not improbable that some rudiments of the peculiar system of system of hymnody which now prevails throughout the hymn- Q. ree k communion, and whose affinities are rather to the Hebrew and Syriac than to the classical forms, may have existed in the church of Constantinople, even at that time. Anatolius, patriarch of Constantinople in the middle of the 5th century, was the precursor of that system ; but the reputation of being its proper founder belongs to Romanus, of whom little more is known than that he wrote hymns still extant, and lived towards the end of that century. The importance of that system in the services of the Greek church may be understood from the fact that the late Dr Neale computed four-fifths of the whole space (about 5000 pages) contained in the different service-books of that churcla to be occupied by hymnody, all in a language or dialect which has ceased to be anywhere spoken. The system lias a peculiar technical terminology, in which the words &quot;troparion,&quot; &quot;ode,&quot; &quot; canon,&quot; and &quot;hirmus&quot; (efpjuos) chiefly require explanation. The troparion is the unit of the system, being a strophe or stanza, seen, when analysed, to be divisible into verses or clauses, with regulated cresiiras, but printed in the books as a single prose sentence, without marking any divisions. The following (turned into English, from a canon &quot; by John Mauropus) may be taken as an example : &quot; The never-sleeping Guardian, | the patron of my soul, | the guide of my life, | allotted me by God, | I hymn thee, Divine Angel j of Almighty God.&quot; Dr Neale and most other writers regard all these &quot; troparia &quot; as rhythmical or modu lated prose. Cardinal J. B. Fitra, on the other hand, who in 18C7 and 1876 published two learned works on this subject, main tains that they are really metrical, and governed by definite rules of prosody, of which he lays down sixteen. According to him, each &quot; troparion &quot; contains from three to thirty-three verses ; each verse varies from two to thirteen syllables, often in a continuous series, uniform, alternate, or reciprocal, the metre being always syllabic, and depending, not on the quantity of vowels or the position of consonants, but on an harmonic series of accents. In various parts of the services solitary troparia are sung, under various names, &quot;contacion,&quot; &quot;oscos,&quot; &quot;cathisma,&quot; &c., which mark distinctions either in their character or in their use. An ode is a song or hymn compounded of several similar &quot;troparia,&quot; usually three, four, or live. To these is always pre fixed a typical or standard &quot;troparion,&quot; called the liirmus, by which the syllabic measure, the periodic series of accents, and in fact the whole structure and rhythm of the stanzas which follow it are regulated. Each succeeding &quot; troparion &quot; in the same &quot;ode &quot; contains the same number of verses, and of syllables in each verse, and similar accents on the same or equivalent syllables. The &quot; hirmus &quot; may either form the first stanza of the &quot;ode&quot; itself, or (as is more frequently the case) may bo taken from some other piece ; and, when so taken, it is often indicated by initial words only, without being printed at length. It is generally printed within commas, after the proper rubric of the &quot;ode.&quot; A hymn in irregular &quot; stichera &quot; or stanzas, without a &quot;hirmus,&quot; is called &quot;idiomelon.&quot; A system of three or four odes is &quot;triodioii&quot; or &quot; tetraodion. A canon is a system of eight (theoretically nine) connected odes, the second being always suppressed. Various pauses, relieved by the interposition of other short chants or readings, occur during the singing of a whole &quot;canon.&quot; The final &quot;troparion&quot; in each ode of the series is not unfrequcntly detached in sense (like the &quot; ephymnia &quot; of Ephraem Syrus), particularly when it is in the (very common) form of a &quot; theotokion,&quot; or ascription of praise to the mother of our Lord, and when it is a recurring refrain or burden. There were two principal periods of Greek hymnography constructed on these principles, the first that of Romanus and his followers, extending over the 6th and 7th centuries, the second that of the schools which arose during the Iconoclastic controversy in the 8th century, and which continued for some centuries afterwards, until the art itself died out. The works of the writers of the former period were [EASTERN CHURCH. collected in 1 ropologia, or church hymn-books, which Scl were held in high esteem till the 10th century, when they R ceased to be regarded as church-books, and so fell into neglect. They are now preserved only in a very small number of manuscripts. From three of these, belonging to public libraries at Moscow, Turin, and Rome, Cardinal Pitra has lately printed, in his Analcda, a number of interesting examples, the existence of which appears to have been, unknown to the late learned Dr Neale, and which, in the cardinal s estimation, are in many respects superior to the &quot; canons,&quot; &c., of the present Greek service-books, from which all Dr Neale s translations (except some from Anatolius) are taken. Cardinal Pitra .s selections include twenty-nine works by Romanus, and some by Sergius, and nine other known, as well as some unknown, authors. He describes them as having generally a more dramatic character than the &quot; melodies &quot; of the later period, and a much more animated style ; and he supposes that they may have been originally sung with dramatic accompaniments, by way of substitution for the theatrical performances of Pagan times. As an instance of their peculiar character, he mentions a Christmas or Epiphany hymn by Romanus, in twenty-five long strophes, in which there is, first, an account of the Nativity and its accompanying wonders, and then a dialogue between the wise men, the Virgin mother, and Joseph. The magi arrive, are admitted, describe the moral and religious con dition of Persia and the East, and the cause and adventures of their journey, and then oft er their gifts. The Virgin intercedes for them with her Son, instructs them in some parts of Jewish history, and ends with a prayer for the salvation of the world. The controversies and persecutions of the 8th and sue- M ceeding centuries turned the thoughts of the &quot; melodists &quot; is of the great monasteries of the Studium at Constantinople and St Saba in Palestine and their followers, and those of the adherents of the Greek rite in Sicily and South Italy (who suffered much from the Saracens and the Normans), into a less picturesque but more strictly theological course ; and the influence of those controversies, in which the final success of the cause of &quot;Icons&quot; was largely due to the hymns, as well as to the courage and sufferings, of these confessors, was probably the cause of their supplanting, as. they did, the works of the older school. Cardinal Pitra gives them the praise of having discovered a graver and more solemn style of chant, and of having done much to fix the dogmatic theology of their church upon its present lines of near approach to the Roman. Among the &quot; melodists &quot; of this latter Greek school there were many saints of the Greek church, several patriarchs, and two emperors, Leo the Philosopher, and Constantino Porphyrogenitus, his son. Their greatest poets were Theodore and Joseph of the Studium, and Cosmas and John (called Damascene) of StSaba. Dr Neale has translated into English verse several selected portions, or centoes, from the works of these and others, together with four selections from earlier works by Anatolius. Some of his translations, particularly &quot; The clay is past and over,&quot; from Anatolius, and &quot; Christian, dost thou see them,&quot; from Andrew of Crete, have been adopted into hymn-books used in many English churches ; and the hymn &quot;Art thou weaiy,&quot; etc., which is rather founded upon than translated from one by Stephen the Sabaite, has obtained still more general popularity. The older learning on the subject of Greek hymnody and church music is collected in a dissertation prefixed to the second volume for June of the Bollandists Ada Sanctorum ; the more recent in Cardinal Pitra s Hymnogro-phie de FEgli.w Grecqiir, (Rome, 1867), and Analcda Sacra, &c. (Paris, 1876), in the Antholocjia Grccca Carminum Christianorum (Leipsic, 1871), and in Dr Daniel s Thesaurus Ili/mnologicus, There is also an able paper on Cardinal
 * Pitra s works, by M. E. Miller, in te Journal dcs Savants for 1876.