ATHENIAN ARMOSIS

ANTIQUES

How would it be possible to record relics in a temple and not find printed material, even in the form of a book, since this was a Christian invention par excellence! The liturgical texts, i.e. the services of our Church arranged in daily, weekly and annual repetitions, are gathered in the so-called Minaia, the Prayer Book, the Triodium, the Pentecostal Book, the Priestly Books, the Prayers or Agiasmataria, the Psalter, the Clock, the Acts of the Apostles , the Evangelist and others, which are usually accompanied by a standard code, which provides what will be chanted and what will be performed for each occasion of a movable holiday and therefore dependent on the Easter cycle of holidays. So a standard of 1632 is the oldest form recorded in our Archdiocese.

In parallel with these there are other helpful books such as the Pidalio, the Confession, systems of sacred rules, various other psychological benefits of an ascetic nature, of monastic origin, such as the works of Saint Nicodemus of Agioreitos, the Kollyvadas and other Christian European ones of Protestant inspiration. Books with Karamanlid script, books from the 19th and even the end of the 18th century, demonstrate the thirst of the Greeks for learning and knowledge.

Music-psaltery publications and even some from areas under Ottoman rule, as they contain polychronisms of the Sultans. Printed images, antibolas, various anniversary editions of the New Testament such as the one in 1921 during the centenary of the Revolution of 1821 but also the translated edition of 1901 which led to the so-called Decembriana.

Another family of forms are the evangelists, which of course we have classified in the sacred vessels because of their use, but those of them that have important memories are registered in the present category.

Since 1912, all churches have been obliged to keep administrative and other archival-registry books, where council minutes of births-baptisms, marriages and deaths were recorded. Some of them are written by the hand of consecrated priestly figures of Athens.

Finally, printed architectural plans of great Greek and foreign architects and church builders, heraldry of church inaugurations, and banknotes make up the mosaic of this category of our ecclesiastical heirlooms.