Abstract:
In this article, the author discusses the archaic version of one of the most ancient Nativity hymns in Slavonic menaion “Angelic Powers, Go Forward”, which is already known from 12th c. GIM Sin. 162 and still performed on December 20, being attributed to the Byzantine poet of 6th c. Romanos the Melodist. The newly found Greek version of the hymn is published for the first time in Russian translation according to the 9th c. new tropologion Sinai Greek NE ΜΓ 56+ΜΓ 5. Its refrain “Blessed is the fruit of Thy womb” suggests the interpretation shift from the person of Christ to the person of Theotokos, and the redaction can be differentiated as “Marian.” It is originated in the the prophecy of Isaiah about the Virgin who will give birth to the Son of God, related to this feast already in the 5th c., according to the Jerusalem Armenian Lectionary (Is. 7: 10–17), and interprets the event as its fulfillment. Textological parallels in 9th–10th cc. Greek and Syro-Melkite manuscripts speak of the archaic redaction stability in the Christian East that time: the same refrain is to be found in 10th c. Sinai Syriac 48 and in 9th c. ΜΓ 56 + 5 for another “Romanos’ cycle” strophe; and in 9th–10th сc. Sinai Greek NE ΜΓ 58 a hymn for Theophany, which is modeled on this redaction. With the introduction of the Synaxis of the Holy Theotokos feast, after the official Sixth Council resolution (681), and the Marian hymnography concentration around it, the Nativity celebrations development, with its fore-feast days, and the christological hymnography concentration around them, a “traditional” version of the hymn, with the refrain: “Blessed is our God who was born, glory to Thee!”, along with the expansion of the Constantinopolitan rite in 10th c. became the main one in Greek, Georgian, Slavonic codices up to the present day. But the archaic, “Marian” one, retains its significance as this text history, and may still be discovered in Slavonic translations.
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