Tipo

El antiguo y medieval rito catedralicio de Constantinopla, llamado "asmatikē akolouthia" ("servicios cantados"), no se conserva bien y el manuscrito más antiguo que se conserva data de mediados del siglo VIII. ^{[ nota 1 ]} Este rito alcanzó su clímax en el Typikon de la Gran Iglesia ( Santa Sofía ), que se utilizó solo en dos lugares: su catedral homónima y la Basílica de San Demetrio en Tesalónica ; en esta última sobrevivió hasta la conquista otomana y la mayor parte de lo que se sabe de él proviene de descripciones en los escritos de San Simeón de Tesalónica .

Los typika surgieron en el seno de los movimientos monásticos de la primera época cristiana para regular la vida en los monasterios , y varios typika que se conservan de Constantinopla, como los del monasterio de Pantocrátor y el convento de Kecharitomene , nos ofrecen una visión de la vida y las costumbres monásticas bizantinas antiguas. Sin embargo, es el typikon de la Santa Laura de San Sabas el Santificado, cerca de Jerusalén , el que se sintetizó con el rito catedralicio mencionado anteriormente y cuyo nombre lleva el typikon que se utiliza hoy en día en el rito bizantino .

En su Historia Lausaica , Paladio de Galacia , obispo de Helenópolis , registra que los primeros ermitaños cristianos no solo rezaban los Salmos , sino que también cantaban himnos y recitaban oraciones (a menudo en combinaciones de doce). ^{[ 2 ]} Con el auge del monacato cenobítico (es decir, vivir en comunidad bajo la tutela de un abad , en lugar de como ermitaños solitarios), el ciclo de oración se volvió más fijo y complejo, con diferentes prácticas rituales en distintos lugares. Egeria , un peregrino que visitó Tierra Santa alrededor del 381-384, registró lo siguiente:

But among all things it is a special feature that they arrange that suitable psalms and antiphons are said on every occasion, both those said by night, or in the morning, as well as those throughout the day, at the sixth hour, the ninth hour, or at lucernare, all being so appropriate and so reasonable as to bear on the matter in hand. (XXV, 5) ^[3]

The standardization of what became Byzantine monastic worship began with Saint Sabbas the Sanctified (439–532), who recorded the office as it was practiced at his time in the area around Jerusalem, passing on what had been handed down to him by St. Euthymius the Great (377–473) and St. Theoktistos (c. 467). This area was at the time a major center of both pilgrimage and monasticism, and as a result the daily cycle of services became highly developed. St. Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem (560–638) revised the Typikon, and the material was then expanded by St. John Damascene (c. 676 – 749). This ordering of services was later known as the Jerusalem or Palestinian or Sabbaite Typikon. Its usage was further solidified when the first printed typikon was published in 1545. It is still in widespread use among most Byzantine monastic communities worldwide as well as in parishes and cathedrals in large swaths of Eastern Orthodoxy, notably, in Russia.

In the 8th century, the development of monastic liturgical practice was centered in the Monastery of the Stoudios in Constantinople where the services were further sophisticated, in particular with regard to Lenten and Paschal services and, most importantly, the Sabbaite Typikon was imported and melded with the existing typikon; as Fr. Robert F. Taft noted,

How the cathedral and monastic traditions meld into one is the history of the present Byzantine Rite. ... [St. Theodore the Studite] summoned to the capital some monks of St. Sabas to help combat iconoclasm, for in the Sabaitic chants Theodore discerned a sure guide of orthodoxy, he writes to Patriarch Thomas of Jerusalem. So it was the office of St. Sabas, not the [sung service] currently in use in the monasteries of Constantinople, which the monks of Stoudios would synthesize with material from the asmatike akolouthia or cathedral office of the Great Church to create a hybrid "Studite" office, the ancestor of the one that has come down to us to this day: a Palestinian horologion with its psalmody and hymns grafted onto a skeleton of litanies and their collects from the euchology of the Great Church. Like the fusion of Anglo-Saxon and French in the formation of English, this unlikely mongrel would stand the test of time.^{[note 2]}

The typika in contemporary use evolved from this synthesis.