Ex Fonte – Journal of Ecumenical Studies in Liturgy

The Holy Friday Idiomelon Σήμερον κρεμᾶται ἐπὶ ξύλου

2024-04-16T12:19:55+00:00

Σήμερον κρεμᾶται ἐπὶ ξύλου (“Today, he is hung upon wood”) is among the most widely disseminated hymns for the commemoration of Christ’s passion to have emerged from the Christian East. One of twelve idiomela of the late antique Holy Friday liturgy of Jerusalem, it was transmitted in Greek, Georgian, and Syriac, entered the Constantinopolitan Triodion, and survives to this day in the Byzantine rite. Despite its enduring popularity, the hymn remains little studied. This article contextualises the hymn within the history of liturgical development, confirms the existence of a shorter original Greek text, and documents the development of a longer version.

Enarxis

2024-03-20T16:30:04+00:00

This study investigates the origins of the interpretation in our contemporary times of the Greek term enarxis (lit. beginning) as synonymous with a celebratory macro-structure prior to the entry with the Gospel in the Byzantine Divine Liturgy. The examination of the manuscript sources of the 10^th–11^th centuries shows that this interpretation is arbitrary. According to the current state of research, it seems that the first author to make the semantic expansion from beginning to initial macro-structure was Frank E. Brightman.

Occasional Prayers Concerning Sickness & Healing in Bohairic Euchologia

2023-12-12T12:17:49+00:00

Prayer texts from late antiquity and the medieval period attest to the prevalence of practices related to healing, both those promoted as official ritual and those denounced by Church authorities as competing magical practices. These healing practices often, consisted of prayers pronounced by clerics empowered for such ministry (e. g. priests and bishops) to bless substances like oil or water or to otherwise invoke divine grace for the healing of individuals. Such practices took place either in church or in a domestic setting, though in many cases were designed for individual use on a particular sick person. The present article provides texts, translations, and commentary on a group of seven such prayers related to sickness and health found in manuscripts of the Bohairic Coptic Euchologion as part of a broader analysis of the manuscript tradition of the Bohairic Euchologion and the prayer practices of medieval Copts that it reflects.