Great Synaxarion

A Synaxarion is an important genre of Byzantine liturgical writing. It is a collection of the commemorations of saints, which, along with commemorations, includes martyrdoms or lives, Triodia, and various regulations and canons adopted by the holy fathers. The Synaxaries of the 9th and 11th centuries were gradually acquiring features of a Typikon. The Athonite redaction of the Synaxary was widely spread in the Byzantine realm, and apart from the Hagiorite liturgical practice, was based on the Synaxaries of the Monastery of Stoudiou and Constantinople.
The first translation of the Synaxary into Georgian was executed by Euthymius the Hagiorite (1005-1019), the hegumen of the Iviron Monastery. Euthymius’s version is known in scholarship as the Lesser Synaxary, for the purpose of differentiating with George the Hagiorite’s Great Synaxary. Regrettably however, Euthymius’s translation has survived in a sole and defective manuscript.
Due to the constant change in the liturgical practice, the Synaxary was perpetually expanding with new commemorations being added. In time, the Athonite Synaxary was expanded by new commemorations and a new edition became a desideratum. In the first half of the eleventh century, the so-called Great Synaxary was created on the Holy Mountain. This version was translated into Georgian between 1042-1044 by another Hegumen of the Iveron Monastery, George the Hagiorite. The Georgian translation is the only witness to the original Great Synaxary and to the early Hagiorite liturgical practice in general, as the original Greek text has not survived.
George’s Great Synaxary was the main liturgical guidebook of the Georgian Church until the 14th century, when it was substituted by the Sabaitic Typikon of Šio-Mghvime. Nevertheless, the Great Synaxary retained its relevance, as numerous manuscripts of this redaction down to the eighteenth century have survived.
Due to its momentous liturgical importance, the manuscripts of George’s Synaxary has preserved contemporaneous and later agapae, commemorations, and colophons that provide crucial information to the study of Georgian monasteries and other aspects of medieval Georgian history.
The following edition George’s Great Synaxary is based on the six eleventh-century manuscripts. The critical text of the Synaxary is provided with an introduction and a historical overview of the formation and development of the Great Synaxary, of its Georgian translation, and of other issues that the study raises: the regulations of the canon of the Psalms, the commemoration of Georgian saints in the Synaxary, and so on.
The Great Synaxary consists of several constituent parts. The first, monthly part of the Synaxary, was based on Constantinople’s Hagia Sophia Synaxary, which is rich in saints’ commemorations and martyrdoms. The Georgian Synaxary contains more commemorations than any individual manuscript of the Constantinopolitan Synaxary, nevertheless all commemorations of George’s redaction are attested in Delehaye’s critical redaction of the Constantinople Synaxary and vice versa. The only addition that George allowed to the Synaxary in the first, monthly, part of the Synaxary, was the commemoration of two Georgian figures – John and Euthymius the Hagiorites. In other manuscripts of the eleventh century, other Georgian figures also appear: Prokhorios the Iberian (12. II, Jer. Geo-24-25), St Nino of Cappadocia (14 I, O/Sin. Geo-4-61, Jer. Geo-24-25), Hilarion the Iberian (19. XI, Ivir. Geo. 30, A193).
The second part of the Great Synaxary contains the periods of a Triodion and a Pentekostarion. The study has revealed that the source of this part of the Synaxary must have been the Hagiorite Typikon, which on its part followed the Typikon of the Stoudio Monastery.
The third part of the Great Synaxary, consists of five disciplinary articles: 1. On the meals and drinks and the type and quantity of the meals. 2. Concerning the great and holy fasts. 3. Concerning the regulation of meals and work for the novitiate monks. 4. Concerning the Enunciation. 5. Concerning the clothing. The direct source of these articles is the Hypotypos of Theodore Studiou and the Diatypos of Athanasios the Hagiorite, both reworked on the Holy Mountain. Only the Georgian version of this work has survived.
The disciplinary part is followed by shorter articles. 1. The headings and endings of the lessons from the Gospels, 2. The Gospel lessons for the morning of the Resurrection, 3. The regulation of the consecration of a church, 4. Prokimenoi of the Liturgy, 5. Hallelujah from the Psalms, 6. Vesper Prokimenoi, 7. Notes on the rules of the reading of the Psalms, 8. Typikon’s indices, 9. The list of Kings and Patriarchs, 10. Dorotheos of Tyra, Concerning the Seventy apostles of Christ.
The text of the Typikon culminates a complex of Exaposteilarion.
The present edition of the Great Synaxary is supplied with a critical apparatus: liturgical schemata and terms, dictionary, indices of Biblical books and hymns, personal and geographic indices, which will aid the reader in a better comprehension of the text.