Mary in the Hymnody of the East Page 1 of 16 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 16 September 2019 Print Publication Date: Aug 2019 Subject: Classical Studies, Classical Religions and Mythologies Online Publication Date: Sep 2019 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198792550.013.21 Mary in the Hymnody of the East John Anthony McGuckin The Oxford Handbook of Mary Edited by Chris Maunder Abstract and Keywords Beginning with a notice of the major Marian hymnal elements in the New Testament text, this study goes on to consider how the most ancient Christian tradition of celebrating the role of the Virgin Mary in the salvific events the Church commemorates at prayer runs on in an unbroken line into the earliest liturgical examples from the Byzantine Greek liturgy. The study exegetes some of the chief liturgical troparia addressed to the Theotokos in the Eastern Orthodox Church ritual books. It analyses some of the more famous and renowned poetic acclamations of the Virgin in Byzantine literary tradition, such as the Sub Tuum Praesidium, the Akathist, and the Nativity Kontakion of Romanos the Melodist, but also goes on to show how the minor Theotokia (or ritual verses in honour of the Vir gin), taken from the Divine Liturgy and from the Eastern Church’s Hours of Prayer, all consistently celebrate the Mother of God’s role in the salvific work of Christ in the world. Keywords: Magnificat, Theotokos, Akathist, Chairetismoi, Proklos of Constantinople, Romanos the Melodist, Byzantine hours THE hymnal elements visible in the New Testament (Luke 1:46–55, 2:29–32; Rev. 15:3–4, 19:1–8; Phil. 2:5–11; Col. 1:15–20; 1 Tim. 3:16) are among the earliest levels of sources still remaining there. When Paul quotes a hymn the Corinthian Christians were singing in the mid-forties of the first century, he does so in order to appeal to the theology present in what he considers a ‘traditional’ element of a church he wishes to instruct. This being so the Christological hymn must surely be among the very first genres of theology ever written down and practised for community catechesis. Despite years of the neglect of the implications, it has also become more and more unarguably evident, that Christian ‘inter est’ in Mary the Mother of Jesus (which means theological interest given the nature of all the New Testament texts) was prominent from the outset too. The highly charged theolog ical narratives in which Mary appears conform to the general character of the texts, that is, they are primarily Christological in nature. So, for example, the infancy narratives with their stress on the ‘virgin who is with child’, fulfilling in Mary the typology of Isaiah (Matt. 1:18, 23; Isa. 7:14), show Jesus as the fulfilment of prophetic hopes; the encounter of Mary with Elizabeth (Luke 1:39–56) shows how a greater ‘lord’ than the greatest of all