Schriften zur Balkanforschung

As a manifesto of triumph over iconoclasm (843), the Synodikon of Orthodoxy provides a valuable insight into the study of the Orthodox doctrine through the centuries. The present work considers the Synodikon as a living text and as an object and a field of memory contests, invested in equal measure by the ecclesiastical authority and the monarchical power. The first part of the book questions the relationship between various textual traditions and between text and ritual, the stakes of the liturgical commemoration, as well as the ways in which “right fait” and “sin” are periodically recast and employed as political arguments within the Neo-Hellenic, South Slavic and Muscovite worlds. The second part retraces the history of the only known Romanian version of the Synodikon (Triôdion, Buzău, 1700) and analyses the political factors that shaped the liturgical apparatus in Romanian language. Introduced into the cult to support the anti-Catholic and anti-Calvinist policy promoted by the Wallachian prince Constantin Brâncoveanu (1688-1714) and by Patriarch Dositheos II of Jerusalem (1669-1707), the Synodikon came out of use when the secular power could no longer support the ecclesiastical authorities’ initiatives. Although its memory lives on, the text never regained its place in the liturgy. The volume also includes critical editions of the Romanian texts of the Synodikon of Orthodoxy and of the Canon composed by the Ecumenical Patriarch Methodius I, a prosopographic dictionary, and the reproduction of the Slavic prototype of the Romanian Synodikon (Triôdion, Lviv, 1664).