The Menaion ( el, Μηναῖον; Slavonic: Минїѧ, ''Miniya'', "of the month") is the liturgical book used by the Eastern Orthodox Churchand those Eastern Catholic Churches which follow the

Byzantine Rite The Byzantine Rite, also known as the Greek Rite or the Rite of Constantinople, identifies the wide range of cultural, liturgical, and canonical practices that developed in the Eastern Christianity, Eastern Christian Church of Constantinople. Th ...

containing the propers for fixed dates of the calendar year, ''i.e.'' entities not dependent of the

date of Easter As a moveable feast, the date of Easter is determined in each year through a calculation known as (). Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the Paschal full moon, which is the first full moon on or after 21 March (a fixed approxi ...

. The Menaion is the largest volume of the propers for the Byzantine Rite and is used at nearly all the daily services.

Editions

The complete Menaion is published in twelve volumes, one for each month; the first volume is for September which commences the Byzantine

liturgical year The liturgical year, also called the church year, Christian year or kalendar, consists of the cycle of liturgical seasons in Christian churches that determines when feast days, including celebrations of saints, are to be observed, and whi ...

. The Festal Menaion is an abridged version containing texts for those great feasts falling on the fixed cycle, some editions also containing feasts of the major saints. The General Menaion contains services for each type of celebration (

apostles An apostle (), in its literal sense, is an emissary, from Ancient Greek ἀπόστολος (''apóstolos''), literally "one who is sent off", from the verb ἀποστέλλειν (''apostéllein''), "to send off". The purpose of such sending ...

, martyrs, etc.) with blank spaces for the name of the

saint In religious belief, a saint is a person who is recognized as having an exceptional degree of Q-D-Š, holiness, likeness, or closeness to God. However, the use of the term ''saint'' depends on the context and Christian denomination, denominat ...

(s) commemorated. Originating before the invention of printing when the enormous volume of the complete Menaion could not be copied for every church, this is still used for saints that do not have complete services, ''e.g.'', for the patron feast of a church named after a minor saint; it is also used by

missions Mission (from Latin ''missio'' "the act of sending out") may refer to: Organised activities Religion * Christian mission, an organized effort to spread Christianity *Mission (LDS Church), an administrative area of The Church of Jesus Christ of ...

and parishes unable to afford a complete Menaion. Supplementary volumes to the Menaion exist for local saints, ''e.g.'', one for all the Saints of the Kiev Caves Monastery, or for newly canonized saints or icons which have their own locally observed feasts.

Calendar

Since 1921, there have been two calendars in use within the Orthodox Church: the Julian Calendar and the Revised Julian Calendar.which is aligned with the Gregorian Calendar As of this century there is a thirteen-day difference between the two calendars, so where the former is used, any given fixed date occurs thirteen days later than where the latter is used, ''e.g.'', Christmas is fixed on December 25, but where the Julian calendar is used, that date falls on what is commonly known as January 7. The date of Pascha, however, is everywhere reckoned using the Julian Calendar, resulting in differing interactions between the Paschal cycle and the fixed cycle, ''e.g.'' the Annunciation may fall as late as

Bright Wednesday Bright Week, Pascha Week or Renewal Week ( el, Διακαινήσιμος Ἑβδομάς) is the name used by the Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Rite Catholic Churches for the period of seven days beginning on Easter and continuing up to (but n ...

where the Julian Calendar is used but only as late as the Thursday before Palm Sunday where the revised calendar is used.

Icons

The term "Menaion" is also applied to icons of all the saints whose

feast day The calendar of saints is the traditional Christian method of organizing a liturgical year by associating each day with one or more saints and referring to the day as the feast day or feast of said saint. The word "feast" in this context d ...

s fall within a particular month. A particular church may have 12 such icons, one for each month of the year, or it may have one large icon depicting all 12 months on one panel.

Notes

References

Bibliography

Review of ''Festal Menaion'' translated by Mother Mary and Archimandrite Kallistos Ware
"Theology Today" 35 (1978) July, 241-243. * Wikisource has the article of the Catholic Encyclopedia, edition of 1913, which is now in the public domain: look at Menaion

External links

Complete text in the Church Slavonic language, Retrieved 2013-08-29
* ttp://www.orthlib.info/Menaia/Festal_Menaion/Festal-Menaion.html Text of the Festal Menaion in the Church Slavonic language, Retrieved 2013-08-29br>Snippets of the text in the English language, Retrieved 2013-08-29
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