International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Stig Frøyshov
University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway; 
[e-mail]
Jerusalem in Constantinople: The Hagiopolite Divine Office in the Imperial City
In many Byzantine liturgical manuscripts one finds rubrics characterizing a ritual element 
as being ‘Hagiopolites’, for instance “kata tên hagiopolitên”. The epithet ‘Hagiopolites’ denotes a 
particular liturgical tradition adhered to in Constantinople. As the term tells, the Hagiopolites 
tradition stemmed from Jerusalem and was adopted in Byzantium, where it existed side by side with 
the local “Ekklesiastes” tradition. The Constantinopolitan Hagiopolites was limited to the Divine 
Office (Book of Hours, hymnography, Psalter), but was combined with the Constantinopolitan 
Lectionary and Euchologion to constitute the Byzantine Rite which gradually gained ground in 
Byzantium and eventually became the one Orthodox liturgical tradition. 
This paper challenges the reigning paradigm according to which the combined Byzantine Rite 
was the result of a Studite reform of the late eighth – early ninth century. The hymnography which 
was composed by Germanos I of Constantinople and Andrew of Crete a century earlier, and which 
could hardly have been used in anything but an integral Hagiopolites rite, testifies to the existence 
of the latter in Constantinople at least by the early eighth century. There are signs suggesting an even 
earlier adoption of the Hagiopolites in Constantinople. 
Another part of the received view that needs to be revised is the assumption that the Hagiopolites 
Divine Office was a monastic rite. The biography of Hagiopolites hymnographers shows that at least 
a part of the Great Palace observed Hagiopolites, and so at least from the eighth century. In addition 
to the imperial patronage of Hagiopolites, it seems that the patriarchate of Constantinople from a 
much earlier time than usually thought embraced Hagiopolites as a canonical rite, to begin with 
as a supplement to the rite of Hagia Sophia. By the eleventh century the Byzantine rite (with its 
Hagiopolites Divine Office) was observed by most churches in Constantinople. The Hagiopolites 
liturgical tradition was therefore neither monastic in character nor practiced only by monasteries.

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