The 11 Matins Gospels of the Rite of Constantinople

Liturgy and Numerology

Abstract

In Sunday Matins in Antioch and Constantinople, no Gospel passage was read until the 6^th century, when Patriarch Severus of Antioch introduced this custom. The Hagiopolite liturgy preserved in Armenian knows a series of four pericopes, which the Jerusalem cathedral later doubled to eight. The 11 resurrection gospels appear in Constantinople in the 9^th century as a series independent of the Jerusalem one in both structure and content. The choice of the number 11 in the series, based on numerology, depends on a solid patristic tradition that links the two numbers of the resurrection, three and eight, in the sum of 11.