TROPARION. - A brief rhythmic prayer of the Byzantine liturgy composed of one or a few sentences; it expresses an idea, a sentiment, or a moment of an action in such a way that, even when troparia occur in a series of four or five, each one, as regards both form and content, is self-contained; and this characteristic distinguishes the troparion from the stanza of a kontakion, 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 troparion; they are divided according to content (anastasimon, despotikon, catanyctikon, theotokion, etc.) or according to the place they occupy in the office (eothinon, isodikon, etc.) or according to other criteria. Among all of them, the principal troparion and perhaps the primitive one is the apolitikion (v.).

The troparion became the constitutive element of the whole of Greek hymnography (v.). A double or triple origin must probably be assigned to the troparion: derivation from the antiphon (cf. L. Petit, Antiphone, in DACL, I, coll. 2461-87), hymn of the feast or of the day added after the biblical part of the Office (compare with the orologhion of the Copts and the hymns of the octoechos of Severus of Antioch), hymn for a special occasion (e.g., St. Anthimus, St. Auxentius and St. Dorotheus: PG 86, 173-76, 1414, 1416; 88, 1820).

Bibliography4 works

BIBL.: S. Petrides, Notes d'hymnographie byzantine, in Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 13 (1904), pp. 433-28; Bardenhewer, IV, pp. 130-32; J. Molitor, Byzantinische Troparia und Kantohia..., in Oriens christianus, 3rd series, 3-4 (1930), pp. 1-5; E. Wellesz, A history of byzant. music and hymnography, Oxford 1940, pp. 144-52.

Alfonso Raes

@incollection{ec12_troparion, author = {Raes, Alfonso}, title = {Troparion}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {XII}, pages = {571--572}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1954}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/troparion} }

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