service files liturgic.md

LITURGICAL TEXTS

Here you will find texts from our principal service books, Paraklitiki, Triodion, Pentecostarion, Menaia, Euchologion and Horologion. I shall also be adding Biblical texts as they used in the services of the Church, in particular the Readings at Vespers and the Psalms and Canticles.

The translations are, in the main, based on the Greek books published by the Apostoliki Diakonia in Athens, which are, for the most part, a reprint of the editions published by Vartholomaios of Koutloumousiou in the early nineteenth century, themselves derived almost unchanged from the long series of printed editions since the sixteenth century. These are practical editions, not critical ones. The latter are virtually non-existent, though the new series of Cypriot Menaia and the latest Holy Week book from Apostoliki Diakonia are making a start.

I have also made use of the early printed texts, published in Venice, of which Chetham’s Library in Manchester, the oldest free public library in England, has a particularly fine collection, including the Euchologion of 1602, which formed the basis of Patriarch Nikon’s reform of the Russian service books that resulted in the schism of the Old Believers.