COLIVI. - This term designates, in the Byzantine rite, a kind of sweet dish made principally of cooked wheat or rice, with the addition of raisins, pomegranate seeds, almonds, or walnuts, all sprinkled with sugar. Blessed in church, in honour of a saint or in memory of the dead, the c. are distributed to those present. In the first case the prayer of blessing is recited at the end of the liturgy (Mass) or of vespers; in the second case, the c., in which one or more candles are fixed, are placed on a small table in the narthex; the priest censes them and performs a brief office: the three troparia, the short litany, and the prayer for the dead.
BIBL.: L. Petit, La grande controverse des colybes, in Echos d'Orient, 2 (1898-99), pp. 321-31; A. Gaudin, Colybes, in DACL, III, cols. 3343-46; N. Nilles, Kalendarium manuale utriaque Ecclesiae, II, Innsbruck 1897, pp. 96-100, 379-81. Liturgical texts in J. Goar, Euchologion, Parigi 1647, pp. 658-61; the brief office in P. Mercenier e F. Paris, La prière des églises de vite byzantin, I, Chevetogne 1947, p. 283. For the symbolism V. Simone Tessalon: PG 155, 688-92. For the origin, the homily of Nectario: PG 39, 1821-40. Alfonso Raes