Pyhittäjäisiemme Karjalan valistajien yhteisen juhlan hymnografasta
Harri Jopi
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe2021042718494
Tiivistelmä
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
remaining 17 hymns represent adoptions or adaptations of different
levels from previous Finnish and Slavonic hymnography. The main source
appears to have been the hymnography for Ss. Sergius and Herman of
Valaam which has served as the basis for 13 hymns. The remaining hymns
become from different sources. In the canon, there are issues pertaining
to the structural principles of that genre.
It is suggested that
the constitution of the hymnography, which can be characterized as
“provincial” in a certain sense, probably contributed to the decision of
the Russian Church to create the Slavonic texts for the feast without
regard to the previous effort in Finnish. Although there is no
compelling need to have the texts complemented to comply better with the
liturgical tradition, such a reworking may still be worth of
consideration.
Kokoelmat
- Rinnakkaistallenteet [19207]