Talk:Akathist

Merge articles

The article Acathistus should be merged into this one. Both obviously are dealing with the same thing, and "Akathist", at least from my experience, seems to be the more standard English spelling. MishaPan 21:23, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Akithistus seems to be a specific Akathist (specific to the Mother of God and to the Saturday of the fifth week of lent. RJFJR 15:12, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Acathistus (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) is just a badly written article with a narrower focus than this one. Any useful information in it should be included in this article, and then that page should be turned into a redirect to this one. — Gareth Hughes 15:18, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

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Attribution to Romanos

The Akathist definitely belongs to the classical and limited repertoire of the kontakia, but it is not Romanos’ work (as already said in the lead section which I converted into a first section). The legend about Romanos is not about the Akathist, but about the Nativity kontakion Ἡ παρθένος σήμερον whose authorship has never been doubted. The same kontakion was treated within the article Idiomelon (I also created a graphic with a comparison of notated kontakaria). I suggest this well-written passage about the legend around Romanos would be better placed in the article Romanos the Melodist. Platonykiss (talk) 23:13, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

Disambiguate

This article isn't aware of its own topic. It is

• partly about akathist hymns in general
• partly about "The Akathist", i.e. [1]
• tangentially also about certain icons which are known as "akathist" for some reason

As far as I can tell, there are about half a dozen "akathists", possibly more as there appear to be modern compositions, but in most cases "akathist" just refers to "The Akathist", i.e. the one to the Theotokos. The article mixes the explanation of "what is an akathist" with the discussion of the 7th-century origin of "The Akathist" without any self-awareness. --dab (𒁳) 14:51, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

It is partly true, but must be understood from a particular point of the user who started this article coming from a Slavic either Orthodox or even Old Believer background which obviously irritated and even confused you. Most Akafist are dedicated the Bogorodžica or to Apostles, but not necessarily to the same feast.

There are two meanings which should not be confused:

1) the Byzantine Akathistos hymnos (ὁ Ἀκάθιστος ὕμνος) and its central place within the cathedral rite at the Hagia Sophia, where the intervention of the Archangel announces the birth of Christ to the Theotokos. Thus, on 25 March (9 months preceding the feast of Nativity, the celebration of the Night Vigil was even outside at the Blachernae chapel)! This is an acrostic kontakion whose oikoi are made over the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet. While other kontakia had a reduced number between one or three oikoi (in the Kievan Rus' even without any oikos, just the prooimion), a very limited number of notated sources even provide all 24 oikoi with notation (a melismatic performance of all oikoi would result in an excessive length and there one might mention a later custom to perform this particular kontakion throughout the weeks of Lent, although it originally belonged to the cycle of immoveable feasts).

2) the reception of this tradition within the Kievan Rus' and the later development of Akafist (акафист, transliterated this way! into Cyrillic script, because the theta was no longer in use, when this genre was created, even if it was just the same letter turned about 90°) which meant a whole genre of its own whose poems were created following the sophisticated model of the Akathistos hymnos as an acrostic kontakion and with numerous oikoi. Such a genre is unique and does not exist within the Greek-Byzantine tradition (many Greek kontakia by different poets are acrostic, but the name "Akathistos" refers only to one particular kontakion), but it is widespread among many communities in all Slavonic speaking countries and at Slavic monasteries on Mount Athos.

In order to avoid such a confusion, one might also consider the opposite suggestion to split this article into two:

1) one about the prototype called "Akathistos hymnos" quoting Byzantine sources and those of the reception of the Byzantine cathedral rite at local cathedrals of the Kievan Rus' which have translated the poem into Old Church Slavonic,

2) and a second one called "Akafist" which treats separately the Slavic genre of acrostic kondak poetry and the so-called book containing a collection of them (and the icon type, if you like), dedicated to other poetry (even very close to the prototype) which should be specified according to the liturgical feast it had been dedicated and also according to the local Slavic redaction of a particular scribe.

The article does not lack sources (which I added at the references as far as they have musical notation, but I recommend to add sources without notation, because Slavic sources are usually without any notation), but the poems translated into English must be verified and should be presented with the Slavic or Greek original (bilingual and trilingual for the prototype, preferably in the archaic orthography of a particular manuscript, I already did this in related articles like kontakion and idiomelon). Concerning the recording, it is very precious, but it should be described more thouroughly, especially date and provenance (when? who made it? which community has been documented?).

Concerning the English translation the reader might also wish to know:

Who made the English translation quoted here (especially if the English translation is used for celebrations)?

Which text is translated (the prototype and which part of it or another traditional akafist poem which must be verified by more additional sources or as an oral tradition)? Platonykiss (talk) 06:50, 31 July 2023 (UTC)