Article,
Un fascicolo ritrovato dell’horologion Sinai gr. 863 (IX secolo)
Orientalia Christiana Periodica, (2009)
Abstract
This study shows that the ninth-century Sinai gr. 863 Horologion – a witness of
primary importance in the history of the liturgy of the hours in the monasteries of
Palestine – was known to Russian scholars from the last century, well before the
edition published in 1964 by Juan Mateos, SJ. The recent report by Georgi R. Parpulov
on the finding of a lost quire, which is being published here in this article, enables an
almost complete reconstruction of the office of the “First Vigil of the Night”. A
liturgico-structural analysis conducted according to the method of comparative liturgy
points out very similar techniques of construction between the “First Vigil of the
Night” and the “First Hour of the Day” present in the same Horologion. Such
discoveries lead to the formulation of a working hypothesis that in Palestine the First
Hour was the result of a symmetrical imitation of the “First Vigil” – or First Hour –
“of the Night”.
