---
title: "Hagiopolitan Octoechos"
chunk: 3/11
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"
---

In the edition of the treatise by Otto Gombosi, the four "elements" (α', β', γ', δ') were associated with certain colours—πρῶτος with black (all colours together), δεύτερος with white (no colour at all), τρίτος with yellow (an elementary colour), and τέταρτος with purple (a combination of elementary colours). These passages could be easily compiled with Zosimos of Panopolis' treatise about the process of bleaching.
The system favoured 3 four tetrachord sets (either modes by themselves or simply degree of the modes with different functions), called κέντροι, ἷσοι, and πλάγιοι. Kέντρος would be probably an early name for μέσος, if it lay between the ἶσος and πλάγιος, it could be as well used as an early name for κύριος ἦχος, because it is mentioned here first, while ἶσος could mean "equivalent", or just basis notes.
The exact point of reference concerning this 24 mode system was not clarified in the treatise, but it is evident, that there was a canonised wisdom which was connected with an ethical doctrine excluding certain passions (πάθη, pathe) as corruptions. Inside this wisdom, there was a Neoplatonic concept of an ideal and divine existence, which can be found and classified according to a modal scheme based on four elements. The term "element" (στοχείον) was less meant as a technical term or modal category, it was rather an alchemistic interpretation of the 24 musical modes.
In comparison, the Hagiopolitan terminology already included the "corruption" (φθορά) as an acceptable modal category in itself, which was neither excluded in the Hagiopolitan Octoechos nor in the modal system of a certain cathedral rite, which was made of 16 echoi. On the other hand, the described system, whether it meant 24 echoi including 12 pathologic echoi, called "aechoi" and "paraechoi", and associated with 4 "katharoi" or just cadential degrees or other modal functions. It is not clear, whether the latter name was simply meant in a geographical or ethnical way or whether it was here connected with a kind of music therapy which included certain pathe as a kind of antidote. Medical treatises of the Mediterranean had been developed later on by the association of melodic modes with 4 elements and 4 humours.

== Latin reception ==

The introduction of the eight mode system in Western chant traditions was part of the Carolingian reform. Officially, it was motivated by Pope Adrian I's confirmation of an earlier Eastern chant reform during the synode in 787, during which he accepted the reform for the Western traditions as well. Nevertheless, a Carolingian interest for the Byzantine octoechos can already be dated back to a visit some years earlier, when a Byzantine legacy introduced a series of antiphons sung during a procession for Epiphany. These antiphons served as a model for the eight modes according to the Hagiopolitan system.
The contemporary invention of a proper Latin version of the eight mode system was mainly studied from two perspectives:

the reception of Ancient Greek music theory since Boethius and the synthesis between music theory as a science and a liberal art of the mathematic Quadrivium on the one hand, and as a medium of chant transmission on the other hand. The eight church tones were called after the names of octave species, which were not connected with modal patterns and plainchant theory in Ancient Greek music theory.
the simplification of chant transmission by a Western manuscript type called tonary which allowed the transfer of a huge chant repertoire like the Roman one, but also its deductive modal classification which changed the oral transmission of chant entirely.

=== Synthesis in Latin music theory ===
Latin theorists who knew the Hellenic tropes only through Boethius' 6th-century creative translation of Claudius Ptolemy's Books of Harmonics (Ἁρμονικῶν βιβλία, Harmonikōn biblia) tried to apply Ancient Greek music theory to the octoechos as a system of eight church tones, identified with the tropes of Antique music theory. The synthesis had not been done earlier than during the Carolingian reform (usually dated according to Charlemagne's admonitio generalis which was decreed in 789), before music theory as science was strictly separated from chant transmission and the cantor as a profession dedicated to church music.
The terms tropus (transposition octave) and modus (the octave species defined by the position of the tonus, the whole tone with the proportion of 9:8, and the semitonium, the half tone with the proportion of 256:243), were taken from Boethius' translation. But the Antique names of the seven modi were applied to the eight church tones called toni. The first attempt to connect Ancient Greek music theory (as expressed in  Boethius) and the theory of plainchant can be found in the treatise De harmonica institutione ("On the foundation of harmonics") by Hucbald of Saint-Amand Abbey, written by the end of the 9th century, when the author addressed his treatise explicitly to cantors and not to mathematicians, whereas the reduction of 4 finales which made up the tetrachord D—E—F—G, was already done in Carolingian times in the treatises Musica and Scolica enchiriadis. Musica enchiriadis is also the only Latin treatise which testifies to the presence of a tetraphonic tone system, represented by 4 Dasia-signs and therefore called "Dasia system", and even the practical use of transposition (metabolē kata tonon) in plainchant, called absonia. Its name probably derived from sonus, the Latin term for ἦχος, but in the context of this treatise the use of absonia is reserved to define transposition as something out of the expected context of a tone system. Thus, the Dasia-system was only used to explain a primitive form of polyphony or heterophony, rather than serving as a precise description of transposition in monodic chant, as it was used in certain genres of Byzantine chant.
Hucbald used an idiosyncratic Greek letter system which referred to the double octave system (bisdiapason) of the systēma teleion known by Boethius' Ptolemy translation. Thus, he called the four elements known as "finales" according to the names of the Greek system: