6 Messages in Context: The Reading of Sermons in Byzantine Churches and Monasteries Mary B. Cunningham It is common knowledge among scholars that many early Christian and Byzantine homilies underwent changes in the course of their transmission. From their frst delivery to a congregation, ofen in an informal, extempore form, through careful editing, and fnally publication either in a volume devoted to one preacher’s work or in a collection of multi-authored texts intended for liturgical use in churches and monasteries, homilies and festal sermons experienced, as it were, a multitude of incarnations.  Unfortunately, owing to the limited number of surviving manuscripts, we ofen only have access to a single version of a homiletic text. It is always worth asking whether this represents its frst appearance, perhaps refecting stenographic notes taken by a member of the congregation, or a revised and edited version of the text. In addition to this consideration, we should bear in mind that many – if not most – of the Byzantine sermons that survive also refect their fnal destiny, as readings that were assigned in monastic and ecclesiastical typika for specifc days and ofces in the liturgical calendar. Since the relationship between the extempore delivery of sermons in church and their development into more literary forms has already received some atention from scholars,  it is the purpose of this article to explore the role of patristic sermons as readings in the Byzantine Church from the ninth century onwards. This is the period in which, according to Albert Ehrhard, the liturgical books in which both homilies and saints’ lives were henceforth  For some approaches to this question: P. Allen and M.B. Cunningham (eds), Preacher and Audience. Studies in Early Christian and Byzantine Homiletics (Leiden, Boston and Cologne, 998); B. Goodall, The Homilies of St John Chrysostom on the Leters of St Paul to Titus and Philemon. Prolegomena to an Edition (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 979); A. Olivar, La Predición Christiana Antigua (Barcelona, 99), esp. Pt. II, chs ii–xii, pp. 55–878.  See especially Goodall, The Homilies of St John Chrysostom. Lymberopoulou.indb 83 15/10/2010 12:41:25