The Shepherd, February 2005

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

IMPERCEPTIBLY and gradually, the kernel of the Vespers and Mattins services grew. Sown in the first century, in the third and fourth it was already stronger, so much so that it had almost reached its full-stature, received its distinctive colouring and had been widely disseminated, and we have records of this not only in the views of those commentators who happened upon this fact, but also in the writings of various churchmen.

On the basis of various works, scholars can delineate the order of service for Vespers and Mattins in the fourth century. Before this, Vespers had consisted of the reading of psalms, among which Ps 140 was of fundamental importance, but grouped around it came others (6 and 12). But the number of psalms used was not the same in different places. The psalms were then filled out or, as it were, adorned with refrains which were tied in with them, such as “Hearken unto me, O Lord;” - this gave rise to the particularly Orthodox way of inserting refrains or hymns between the psalmic verses, which is even known as psalmody. After each psalm or in the intervals between psalms, a prayer would be read by the priest or bishop, and in those days it was done audibly, and not as we do now inaudibly. Besides the psalms and prayers, there were readings from the Sacred Scriptures, from the Old and the New Testaments on normal days, but on feastdays from the New Testament. These readings gave rise in time to the present Paremia. Furthermore, on Vespers, they chanted the hymn, “O Joyous Light,” read the “Vouchsafe, O Lord,” and the Nunc Dimittis. In the third and fourth century we do not see anything in the composition of Vespers which corresponds to the verses on “Lord, I have cried,” although without a doubt similar verses did then exist, which had been introduced although not at the same time as the refrains on the psalms. Such verses came to be composed with the widespread use of the refrains and their taking on a fuller and more rounded character, these being inserted between the psalmic verses to facilitate antiphonal chanting.

The order for Mattins derived like that of Vespers, with psalms, prayers, readings and hymns (Biblical hymns such as “Glory to God in the highest”). However, the number, order and sequences of these various parts had not yet been properly and fully determined. The kernel from which Mattins grew was the morning psalm, number 62. As on Vespers, the psalms were interspersed with prayers, which are the basis of the prayers read silently in the services today.…

At the same time as Vespers and Mattins took a form like their present one, the Vigil Service itself took shape. In Greek it is called agripnia, which means without sleep. This is reflected in the English word that we use for the service, Vigil, from the Latin vigilia. In Russian the service is more generally known as Vsenoschnaya, which means that it is an all-night service. The Greek term for an all-night service interestingly is used by the Russians for a memorial service: pannikhida. This is because oftentimes such memorial services continued through the night. Vigils were served before Sundays, on the eves of the greater feasts and on the patronal festivals of churches.

Vigils do not differ markedly from the services from which they are comprised, except in so far as they are often have more parts and more hymns. We can witness the development of the Vigil through the times of St Basil the Great and St John Chrysostom, but we find more detailed evidence in the sixth and seventh centuries, deriving from the chiefest of the Palestinian monasteries, the Lavra of St Sabbas the Sanctified (+532 A.D.), which is situated near Jerusalem on the Kedron stream. St Sabbas the Sanctified’s name is ever linked with the establishment of the Orthodox order of divine services, because he held Vigil services which did indeed last all-night and did not simply occupy the period before midnight as was the custom in other churches; and because he held fast to and imposed the rule that every day the services should be served in full, and as a consequence of this rigour Jerusalem became, as it were, the birthplace of the round of daily services. One of the reasons that he adhered so strictly to the practice of having Vigils at the Lavra was that many of the monks lived at some distance from the monastery church, and could not be expected to travel back and forth for services several times in one day, as was done in other monasteries where the monks lived in cells gathered close around the church, and so one long Vigil service was served in place of several shorter services.

The events of that period, the fourth to sixth centuries, are imprinted upon the character of the All-night Vigil in the same way as the persecution of the Christians in the first centuries helped shape the more primitive services. The events which made these impressions on the Vigil are primarily: the growth and spread of monasticism and the battle which was waged with the various heresies. The influence of monasticism is manifest in the striving for unsleeping vigilance, in the deep consciousness of man’s sinfulness and in the constant expressions of feeling of repentance, as well as in the extensive, - one might almost say exclusive - use of the Psalter in the services. The fight with the heretical teachings, and the consequent flowering of theological scholarship in the fourth to sixth centuries, corresponded with a flowering of the ecclesiastical arts: architecture, iconography and hymnology. Beginning from the sixth century, this gave impetus to a flowering of the word of teaching, in poetic compositions, in the spread and embellishment of hymns and other forms of hymnology. This provided a rich source of material for the services: verses, contakions, canons and all the rest. All this new material quickly and naturally found a place in the composition of the daily services, the Hours, Vespers and Mattins, but not in the Liturgy itself. The Liturgy became more and more set in its one form, exclusively and sacredly inviolate, thanks to the prestige it derived from its origins (from Jesus Christ and from the Apostles).

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12