The Typikon Decoded: An Explanation of Byzantine Liturgical Practice

by Archimandrite Job Getcha

The Byzantine liturgy, with its beauty, its richness, and its depth, intrigues, inspires, and fascinates a great number of today s Christians; and yet it remains for many almost inaccessible if not incomprehensible.

The Typikon, the liturgical book that contains the order of the liturgical celebration, is complex, whence the necessity of decoding it both for recent converts and for cradle Orthodox Christians desiring to deepen their liturgical observance.

And that decoding is the goal of this book. Developed from courses given at the Institut Saint-Serge in Paris, it covers the celebration of the offices throughout the Byzantine liturgical year. The organization and composition of the liturgical offices are first situated in the context of their historical development, and then are analyzed in detail from a practical point of view.

This explanation of Byzantine liturgical practice, the first of its kind in English, includes an extensive bibliography and comprehensive glossary.

Genres: Theology, Nonfiction

313 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2012

Reviews

[nezvanova · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some useful historical information in a digestible format, but nowhere near as useful as Fekula & Williams' "The Order of Divine Services" (St. John of Kronstadt Press, 1997, 2009). The latter book truly decodes the Typicon and is easier to use than anything I have found in Russian, let alone in English.

[Christian Proano · Rating 3 out of 5]

If what you are expecting is a theological explanation of the Church services and offices, this is not the book.

However, this book is good at analyzing the skeleton of each service and office, giving a historical account of each portion and tentatively from where they come, and a brief rubric description of how are divided and put together. Of course there is always wiggle room that varies from archdiocese to archdiocese, diocese to diocese, from church to church.

If you want to know the place where you should pull hymns and where to place them in order to put a service together, then this is a quick guide.

Standing out on a personal basis is the fact that the liturgical books have the hymns that could be use not that has to be use, in the sense that the material available is plenty. Also the fact that a lot of our current offices (section of the services) come from either Jerusalem or the Palestine area from diverse periods, I just found that impressive.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good introduction to the Liturgics of the Orthodox Church - we have used this text for both Liturgics I and II. It provides some historical basis and analysis, and gives any person a good look at the major services and liturgical books in the Orthodox tradition. Another required text for putting together services is the "Order of Divine Services" printed by St. John of Kronstadt Press, and a similar book which is helpful is "A Practical Handbook for Divine Services" from Jordanville.

[Ted · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the historical information to be interesting but have little interest in the rules of the typikon. It is the rules which dominate the book.