Musical Manuscripts

Manuscripts of church music constitute a special category of manuscripts, due to their content, but mainly due to their form. These codices, which contain all the chanted parts of the night and day services, record in double verses the poetic text, above which the musical symbols are placed. Always written in black and red ink, they capture with this two-tone color, the wonderful Greek Psalter Art. Musical codices today are found in most libraries in the world. On Mount Athos, the place par excellence of worship and reference to God, the cultivation of Psalter became an imperative necessity, since its founding. Necessary, for the organized and orderly chanting of the monks, is the presence of music books. By good fortune, the first musical manuscripts are synchronized with the beginning of organized Athonite monasticism, in the middle of the 10th century. So in this over a thousand-year process, more than 3.000 manuscripts were created and preserved to this day. This number of musical manuscripts that have survived on Mount Athos is slightly more than one-third of the manuscripts of the Psalter Art that are known throughout the world. Approximately one-eighth of the Athonite musical manuscripts are in the Great Monastery of Vatopedi.

In the library of the Monastery, no systematic work has been carried out so far, to compile an analytical catalogue, mainly regarding the musical manuscripts. This fact does not allow us to speak with certainty about the importance and rarity of the manuscripts. The main part of the musical manuscripts, constitutes a unit with a single numbering, which occupies the third part of the “catalogue of the codices kept in the holy monastery of Vatopedi” (Arkadios of Vatopedi - Sophronyos Eustr. 1924, pp. 207-239). The entry in the catalogue, as well as all the manuscripts of the library, was made in alphabetical order of the title that the manuscripts bear or that the author of the catalogue attributed to them. The numbers relating to the musical codices are 1252 -1536. That is, 285 musical codices were counted and catalogued, almost anagraphically, by the hierodeacon Arkadius of Vatopaidino. After this recording, another twenty-five musical manuscripts were included in the supplementary manuscript catalogue of the library. The musical codices are contained in the Appendix, under the numbers 1581-1589, that is, nine codices and 1688β [=1689]-16902, two other codices. In addition to these catalogued musical codices, the scholarly industriousness and care of the current fathers to save what the older Vatopaidinos left behind, gathered about seventy manuscripts. In addition to these, fifteen musical codices from the Skete of Saint Demetrius are also kept in the library of the Monastery. The total number of musical manuscripts of the monastery amounts to 396. In terms of their content, the collection represents all known groups of musical manuscripts, such as Anastasimataria, Stichiraria, Ermologia, Papadikas, Mathemataria, Kratimataria, Ikimataria, Ta Apanta of the greatest ecclesiastical composers such as Petros Bereketis and Anastasios Rapsaniotis, as well as anthologies with always rich and varied content.

The musical manuscripts housed in the monastery cover the entire period from the 11th century to the 20th. The post-Byzantine manuscripts certainly outnumber those of the Byzantine period. In this way, “gaps” are created that are not justified with regard to the history of the monastery. It is certain that many codices of the Vatopedi library today adorn well-known libraries inside and outside our homeland, providing us with a subjective image of the Vatopedi collection. A representative example is the oldest dated musical codex known today, which is now housed in the library of St. Petersburg. This is a parchment Sticherarium, written in the Vatopedi Monastery on May 3rd of the Christian year 1106. This is also a first, for which the Holy Great Monastery of Vatopedi is proud.