MENOLOGION. - A Byzantine liturgical book that contains in full the lives of the saints, arranged according to days and months, beginning from September 1, the Byzantine New Year, to be read on the vigils of their feasts.

By order of the emperor Basil II (976-1025), Symeon Metaphrastes (or Logothetes) composed his celebrated Menologion, both by collecting and reworking earlier sources and by composing new lives (PG 114-16); his influence was such that, after him, no similar collection was made, and the other, even more extensive ones of the earlier 7th and 8th centuries were abandoned or supplanted.

The term Menologion is sometimes used to designate the synaxaria, or collections of the lives of saints, in an abridged and compendious form; among these, numerous, is the so-called Menologion of the emperor Basil II of the Vatican Library, famous for the richness of its miniatures (ed. Pio Franchi de' Cavalieri, Turin 1907).

It is an error to confuse with the M. the very brief hagiographic notices in the form of a calendar or martyrology, or even the indexes of the scriptural readings assigned for each day of the Office.

Bibliography7 works

BIBL.: A. Ehrhard, Die Legendenammlung des Symeon Metaphrastes, in Festschrift des deutsch. Campo Santo in Rom, Freiburg 1896, pp. 46-82; A. Ehrhard, Les Ménologies grecs, in Analecta Bollandiana, 16 (1897), pp. 311-29; 17 (1898), pp. 448-52; H. Delehaye, Propylaeum ad Acta SS. Nov., Brussels 1902, pp. IV-VLVII ff.; H. Leclercq, Ménologie, in DACL, XI, coll. 419-30; H. Engberding, Menologium, in LThK, VII, col. 87; P. Oppenheim, De libris liturgicis, Turin-Rome 1940, p. 155.

Pietro Siffrin

@incollection{ec8_menologi, author = {Siffrin, Pietro}, title = {Menologi}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {VIII}, pages = {689--690}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1952}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/menologi} }

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