Pyhittäjäisiemme Karjalan valistajien yhteisen juhlan hymnografasta

• Main Author: Harri Jopi
• Other Authors: PÄÄT Musiikkitiede, PÄÄT Musicology, 2602207
• Language: Finnish
• Published: Ortodoksisten pappien liitto & Itä-Suomen yliopiston filosofisen tiedekunnan ortodoksisen teologian koulutusohjelma 2022
• Subjects: karelia*
• Online Access: https://www.utupub.fi/handle/10024/171865; http://ortodoksia.fi/ojs/index.php/ortodoksia/article/view/28/77

The paper deals with the hymnography of the vigil-rank Feast of the Enlighteners of Karelia that was introduced into the liturgical calendar of the Finnish Orthodox Church in 1957. The need for the feast arose when the Lutheran State Church of Finland decided to place All Saints’ Day on the Saturday on or between 31 October and 6 November. That day also became a national holiday, and the Orthodox feast was invented in order to provide the believers with a meaningful liturgical commemoration. At the same time, this provided an opportunity to foster the national spirit of the Orthodox minority. Because such a feast did not exist before, there was no hymnography readily in existence to be used as such. In any case, the texts for the Vigil and Liturgy were composed and published as a booklet in 1959, with no attributions of authorship, and even later, such attributions have remained undisclosed. The texts were customarily referred to as having been “originally conceived in Finnish”. The feast remained exclusively in the Finnish usage until 1974, when, after Patriarch Pimen’s visit in Finland, it was introduced in the Russian Orthodox Church as well. The dates for the feast in the Russian calendar were initially the same as in Finland (although according to the Old Style, so that the feast never coincided in these two countries), but in 2004 the Russian Church transferred the celebration to the fixed date of 21 May (O.S.). One might have presumed that the Russian Church would have made use of the hymnography that was already written, but this did not take place. Rather, the Russian Church had the necessary hymns composed all anew, even though there is correspondence with the apolytikion and the kontakion. The most obvious feature of the hymnography is that it is significantly limited in scope in relation to what would be the standard for a similar kind of commemoration as visible in traditional service books. Furthermore, it transpires that of the 30 hymn stanzas, no more than 13 appear as original compositions. The ...