COLYVA. — In the Byzantine rite, this term designates a kind of sweetmeat made chiefly of cooked wheat or rice, to which is added a purée, pomegranate seeds, almonds, or walnuts, all sprinkled with sugar. After being blessed in church in honour of a saint or in memory of the departed, the colyva are distributed to the faithful. In the first case, the blessing is recited at the end of the Divine Liturgy or Vespers; in the second, the colyva, into which one or more candles have been inserted, are placed upon a small table in the narthex; the priest then censers them and performs a brief office consisting of three troparia, a short litany, and the prayer for the dead.
BIBL.: L. Petit, La grande controverse des colybes, in *Echos d’Orient*, 2 (1898–99), pp. 321–321; A. Gaudin, *Colybes*, in *DACL*, III, cols. 2343–46; N. Nilles, *Kalendarium manuale utriusque Ecclesiae*, II, Innsbruck 1897, pp. 96–100, 379–81. Liturgical texts in J. Goar, *Euchologion*, Paris 1647, pp. 658–61; the brief office in P. Merceneri and F. Paris, *La prière des églises de rite byzantin*, I, Chevetogne 1947, p. 283. For the symbolism V. Simeon of Thessalonica: *PG* 155, 688–92. For the origin, the homily of Nectarios: *PG* 39, 1821–40.