---
title: "Hagiopolitan Octoechos"
chunk: 1/11
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagiopolitan_Octoechos"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:39:20.479308+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Oktōēchos or Octoechos (Greek: ὁ Ὀκτώηχος pronounced in koine: okˈtóixos; from ὀκτώ 'eight' and ἦχος 'sound, mode' called echos; Slavonic: Осмогласие, Osmoglasie from о́смь 'eight' and гласъ 'voice, sound') is the name of the eight mode system used for the composition of religious chant in most Christian churches during the Middle Ages. In a modified form, the octoechos is still regarded as the foundation of the tradition of monodic Orthodox chant today (Neobyzantine Octoechos).
The octoechos as a liturgical concept which established an organization of the calendar into eight-week cycles, was the invention of monastic hymnographers at Mar Saba in Palestine, at the Patriarchates of Antiochia and of Constantinople. It was officially announced as the modal system of hymnography at the Quinisext Council in 692.
A similar eight-mode system was established in Western Europe during the Carolingian reform, and particularly at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 AD which decanonised the former iconoclastic council in 754 and confirmed earlier ones. Quite possibly this was an attempt to follow the example of the Eastern Church by an octoechos reform, even if it was rather a transfer of knowledge with an introduction of a new book called "tonary" which introduced into a Western octoechos of its own design.
It had a list of incipits of chants ordered according to the intonation formula of each tone in its psalmody. Later on, fully notated and theoretical tonaries were also written. The Byzantine book octoechos (9th century) was one of the first hymn books with musical notation and its earliest surviving copies date from the 10th century.

== Origins ==
Students of Orthodox chant today often study the history of Byzantine chant in three periods, identified by the names John of Damascus (675/676-749) as the "beginning", John Koukouzeles (c. 1280–1360) as the "flower" (Papadic Octoechos), and Chrysanthos of Madytos (c. 1770-c. 1840) as the master of the living tradition today (Neobyzantine Octoechos). The latter has the reputation that he once connected in his time the current tradition with the past of Byzantine chant, which was in fact the work of at least four generations of teachers at the New Music School of the Patriarchate.
This division of the history into three periods begins quite late with the 8th century, despite the fact that the octoechos reform was already accepted some decades earlier, before John and Cosmas entered the monastery Mar Saba in Palestine. The earliest sources which gave evidence of the octoechos' use in Byzantine chant, can be dated back to the 6th century.

=== Jerusalem, Alexandria, or Constantinople ===
The common schedule and the focus on the circle around John of Damascus is confirmed by a ninth-century treatise called Hagiopolites (from hagia polis [ἡ ἁγία πόλις], "Holy City", referring to Jerusalem) which only survived in a complete form as a late copy. The Hagiopolites treatise served presumably as an introduction of a book called tropologion—a 9th-century chant book which had been replaced soon by the book octoechos, as part of the sticherarion one of the first chant books fully provided with musical notation. The Hagiopolitan emphasis on John of Damascus was obviously the late result of a 9th-century redaction around the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, so it was part of the later Stoudites' reform between Jerusalem and Constantinople and it was motivated theologically, not only because of his contributions to the tropologion, but also because of the keyrole which John of Damascus' polemic against the iconoclasts had during this council.
Nevertheless, the theological and liturgical concept of an eight-week cycle can be traced back to the cathedral rite of Jerusalem during the 5th century, and originally it was the Christian justification of Sunday as the eighth day after Sabbat. Peter Jeffery assumed a first phase during which the concept existed independently in various places, and a second phase during which Palestine became the leading centre of a monastic hymn reform. It established reform models which were also used later by the generation of John of Damascus. Despite that the first paragraph of the Hagiopolites ascribes the treatise to John of Damascus, it was probably written about 100 years after his death and went through several redactions during the following centuries.
There is no doubt that the octoechos reform itself had already taken place by 692, because certain passages of the Hagiopolites paraphrase certain law texts (the canons of the synodal decree). Eric Werner assumed that the eight-mode system developed in Jerusalem since the late fifth century and that the reform by the hymnographers of Mar Saba were already a synthesis with the Ancient Greek names used for the tropes, applied to a model of Syrian origin already used in the Byzantine tradition of Jerusalem. During the eighth century, long before Ancient Greek treatises were translated into Arabic and Persian dialects between the ninth and the tenth centuries, there was already a great interest among theorists like Abū Yūsuf al-Kindī, whose Arabic terms were obviously translated from the Greek. He adored the universality of the Greek octoechos:

Al-Kindi demonstrated the intervals on the keyboard of a simple four-stringed oud, starting from the third string as well seven steps in ascending as in descending direction.
According to Eckhard Neubauer, there is another Persian system of seven advār ("cycles"), outside the Arabic reception of the Byzantine octoechos, which was possibly a cultural transfer from Sanskrit treatises. Persian and Ancient Greek sources had been the main reference for the transfer of knowledge in Arabian-Islamic science.

=== Monastic reform of Mar Saba ===
According to the Hagiopolites the eight echoi ("modes") were divided in four kyrioi (authentic) echoi and their four respective plagioi (enriched, developed) echoi, which were all in the diatonic genus.