Jump to content

Menaion

From Catholicism Wiki

The Menaion (Koine Greek: Μηναῖον, romanized: Mēnaîon, pronounced [miˈne.on], pl. Μηναῖα, Mēnaîa, [miˈne.a]; Church Slavonic: Минїѧ, romanized: Miníyę,[1] lit. 'of the month') is the liturgical book used by the Eastern Orthodox Church and Eastern Catholic Churches which follow the Byzantine Rite, containing the propers for fixed dates of the calendar year, i.e. entities not dependent on the date of Easter.

The Menaion is the largest volume of the propers for the Byzantine Rite and is used at nearly all the daily services.

Editions

The complete Menaion is published in twelve volumes, one for each month; the first volume is for September which commences the Byzantine liturgical year.

The Festal Menaion is an abridged version containing texts for those great feasts falling on the fixed cycle, some editions also containing feasts of the major saints.

The General Menaion contains services for each type of celebration (apostles, martyrs, etc.) with blank spaces for the name of the saint(s) commemorated. Originating before the invention of printing when the enormous volume of the complete Menaion could not be copied for every church, this is still used for saints that do not have complete services, e.g., for the patron feast of a church named after a minor saint; it is also used by missions and parishes unable to afford a complete Menaion.

Supplementary volumes to the Menaion exist for local saints, e.g., one for all the Saints of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, or for newly canonized saints or icons which have their own locally observed feasts.

Calendar

Since 1921, there have been two calendars in use within the Orthodox Church: the Julian Calendar and the Revised Julian Calendar.[2] As of the 21st century there is a thirteen-day difference between the two calendars, so where the former is used, any given fixed date occurs thirteen days later than where the latter is used, e.g., Christmas is fixed on December 25, but where the Julian calendar is used, that date falls on what is commonly known as January 7. The date of Pascha, however, is everywhere reckoned using the Julian Calendar, resulting in differing interactions between the Paschal cycle and the fixed cycle, e.g. the Annunciation may fall as late as Bright Wednesday where the Julian Calendar is used but only as late as the Thursday before Palm Sunday where the revised calendar is used.

Icons

The term "Menaion" is also applied to icons of all the saints whose feast days fall within a particular month. A particular church may have 12 such icons, one for each month of the year, or it may have one large icon depicting all 12 months on one panel.

See also

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Menaion from mén, "month")

The Menaion is the name of the twelve books, one for every month, that contain the offices for immovable feasts in the Byzantine rite. As in the West, the Byzantine Calendar consists of two series of offices. First there are the movable days, the days of the ecclesiastical year turning around Easter (proprium de tempore); overlying this, as it were, are the feasts of our Lord, the Blessed Virgin, and the Saints that are fixed to certain days of the month of the civil year. The offices for these feasts are contained in the menaia, which therefore correspond to the proprium sanctorum in the Roman breviary.

The origin and first compilation of the menaia is obscure. Apparently the various elements that make up the collection were put together gradually. It seems that the Synaxarion (now an extract from the menaia) was composed first. The Synaxarion contains only short accounts of the saints' lives, the history of the feast and so on, like the lessons of the second nocturn in the breviary. These lives of saints are attributed to Symeon Metaphrastes. The menaia include the Synaxarion and supply also all the other texts and poems (the Canons with their heirmoi, troparia, stichera, kontakia, and so on) required to complete the office. A great part of these poems are ascribed to Romanos, the chief hymn-writer of the Byzantine Church (fifth century). The menaia do not affect the holy liturgy (which is hardly influenced by the calendar), being used only in the Divine Office. The Byzantine ecclesiastical year begins with September. That month therefore forms the first menaion; there is then one for each month to August. The rules for coincidence of feasts and the manner of saying the office on any day must be sought in the typikon; but extracts from the typikon are printed in the menaia. Each office fills five or six small folio pages, the rubrics being printed in red. The general arrangement is this: first come the verses (stichera) sung at the Hesperinos, then the Biblical lessons with the prokeimena and any troparia that may be wanted. The Canon sung at the Orthros follows with all its odes and their troparia. The Synaxarion of the feast follows the sixth ode. The psalms and other unchanging matter are not given. They are found in the other books (Triodion, Parakletike, Oktœchos). The churches of the Byzantine rite that do not use Greek liturgically have translations of the menaia with additional offices for their special feasts and any other modifications they may have introduced. The Slavonic name for the book is mineja, Arabic minaiun, Rumenian mineiu. Parts of the menaia were translated into Syriac by the Melchites during the time that they used that language (a list in Charon: "Le Rite byzantin dans les Patriarcats melkites", Rome, 1908, pp. 33-44). The whole has not been translated into Arabic. The Orthodox and Melchites of Egypt and Syria use instead a selection from them called in Greek "Anthológion" (but "minaiun" in Arabic). The "Menology" (menológion) is either an ecclesiastical calendar or a kind of Synaxarion. The first printed edition of the menaia was made by Andrew and James Spinelli at Venice (1528-1596), and reprinted (1596-1607). The latest Greek editions were published at Venice, in 1873 (Orthodox), and at Rome, in 1888 (Uniate).

Allatius, De libris eccles. Græcorum (Paris, 1645 and 1646); Krumbacher, Gesch. der byzant. Litt. (Munich, 1897), 658-659; Nilles, Kalendarium manuale (2nd ed., Innsbruck, 1896); Maltzew, Die Nachtwache … der Orth. kath. Kirche (Berlin, 1892); Neale, Hist. of the Holy Eastern Church, III (London, 1850); Selections from the Russian menaia in English are published by Orloff, The General Menaion (London, 1890), and The Ferial Menaion (London, 1900).

References

  1. Back to citation "Минея, сентябрь ~ Menaion, September". Богослужебные тексты ~ Liturgical Texts. Библиотека святоотеческой литературы ~ Library of Patristic Literature. Archived from the original on 2020-02-03. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
  2. Back to citation which is aligned with the Gregorian Calendar

Bibliography

Retrieved from "https://catholicism.wiki/index.php?title=Menaion&oldid=106445"