The Greek church poetry is not metrical and rhymed, but written in rhythmical prose for
chanting, like the Psalms, the hymns of the New Testament, the Gloria in Excelsis and the Te Deum.
The older hymnists were also melodists and composed the music.^439 The stanzas are called troparia;^440
the first troparion is named hirmos, because it strikes the tune and draws the others after it.^441 Three
or more stanzas form an ode; three little odes are a triodion; nine odes or three triodia form a canon.
The odes usually end with a doxology (doxa) and a stanza in praise of Mary the Mother of God
(theotokion).^442 A hymn with a tune of its own is called an idiomelon.^443
This poetry fills, according to Neale, more than nine tenths or four fifths of the Greek service
books. It has been heretofore very little known and appreciated in the West, but is now made
accessible.^444 It contains some precious gems of genuine Christian hymns, buried in a vast mass of
monotonous, bombastic and tasteless laudations of unknown confessors and martyrs, and
wonder-working images.^445
The Greek church poetry begins properly with the anonymous but universally accepted and
truly immortal Gloria in Excelsis of the third century.^446 The poems of Gregory of Nazianzus (d.
390), and Synesius of Cyrene (d. about 414), who used the ordinary classical measures, are not
adapted and were not intended for public worship.^447
The first hymnist of the Byzantine period, is Anatolius patriarch of Constantinople (d. about
458). He struck out the new path of harmonious prose, and may be compared to Venantius Fortunatus
in the West.^448
(^439) Hence they were calledμελωδοίas well asποιηταίin distinction from the mereὑμνόγραφοι.The Greek service books
are also music books. Christ discusses Byzantine music, and gives some specimens in Prol. p. CXI-CXLII.
(^440) Τροπάριον, the diminutive ofτρόπος, as modulus is of modus, was originally a musical term.
(^441) Εἰρμός, tractus, a train, series, was likewise originally a musical term likeἀκολουθίαand the Latin jubilatio, sequentia.
See § 96.
(^442) Θεοτοκίον, sc.τροπάριον(more rarely, but more correctly, with the accent on the ante-penultima,θεοτόκιον), from
θεοτόκος, Deipara. The stauro-theotokion celebrates Mary at the cross, and corresponds to the Stabat Mater dolorosa of the
Latins.
(^443) Ιδιόμελον. There are several other designations of various kinds of poems, asἀκολουθία(the Latin sequentia),
ἀναβαθμοί(tria antiphona),ἀντίφωνον, ἀπολυτίκιον(breve troparium sub finem officii vespertini),ἀπόστιχα, αύτομελον,
ἐξαποστειλάριον, ἐωθινά, κάθισμα, καταβασία, κοντάρια, μακαρισμοί, μεγαλυνάρια, οἰ̑κοι, προσόμοια, στιχηρά, τριῴδια,
τετραῴδα, διῴδια, ψαλτήριον, τροπολόγιον.These terms and technical forms are fully discussed by Christ in the Prolegomena.
Comp. also the Introduction of Neale
(^444) By Vormbaum (in the third volume of Daniel’s Thesaurus which needs reconstruction), Pitra, and Christ. The
Continental writers seem to be ignorant of Dr. Neale, the best English connoisseur of the liturgical and poetic literature of the
Greek church. His translations are, indeed, very free reproductions and transfusions, but for this very reason better adapted to
Western taste than the originals. The hymn of Clement of Alexandria in praise of the Logos has undergone a similar transformation
by Dr. Henry M. Dexter, and has been made useful for public worship. See vol. II. 231.
(^445) Even Neale, with all his admiration for the Greek Church, admits that the Menaea contain a "deluge of worthless
compositions: tautology repeated till it becomes almost sickening; the merest commonplace, again and again decked in the
tawdry shreds of tragic language, ind twenty or thirty times presenting the same thought in slightly varying terms." (Hymns
E.Ch. p. 88 sq., 3d ed.)
(^446) See vol. II. 227, and add to the Lit. there quoted: Christ, p. 38-40, who gives from the Codex Alexandrinus and other
MSS. the Greek text of the morning hymn (the expanded Angelic anthemΔόξα ἐν ὑψίστοις θεῳ̑) and two evening hymns
Αἰνει̑τε, παι̑δες. κύριον, andΦω̑ς ἱλαρὸν ἁγίας δόξης) of the Greek church.
(^447) See vol. III. 581 and 921. Christ begins his collection with the hymns of Synesius, p. 3-23, and of Gregory Nazianzen,
23-32.
(^448) See the specimens in vol. III. 583-585. Neale begins his translations with Anatolius. Christ treats of him p. XLI, and
gives hisστιχηρὰ ἀναστάσιμαfind threeἰδιόμελα(hymns with their own melody), 113-117. More than a hundred poems in the