TROPARION. – A brief rhythmic prayer of the Byzantine liturgy consisting of one or a few phrases; it expresses an idea, a sentiment, or a moment of an action in such a way that, even when the t. appear in series of four or five, each one, as regards both form and content, is self-contained; and this characteristic distinguishes the t. from the stanza of a contakion, which cannot be fully understood except in logical or dramatic connection with the preceding and following stanzas.
L. Clugnet (Dictionnaire grec-français des noms liturgiques en usage dans l'Église grecque, Paris 1895, p. 155) lists 33 different kinds of t.; they are divided according to their content (anastasimon, despotikon, catanyctikon, theotokion, etc.), or according to the place they occupy in the Office (eothinon, isodikon, etc.), or according to other criteria. Of all of them, the principal t., and perhaps the original one, is the apolitikion (v.).
The t. has become the hymnography (v.). The t. should probably be assigned a double or triple origin: derivation from the antiphon (cf. L. Petit, Antiphone, in DACL, I, cols. 2461–87), a hymn of the feast or of the day added after the biblical part of the Office (compare the orologhion of the Copts and the hymns of the octoechos of Severus of Antioch), or a hymn for a particular occasion (e.g., St. Antimus, St. Auxentius, and St. Dorotheus: PG 86, 173–76, 1414, 1416; 88, 1820).