On contents and structure of the Panagios Typikon: a contribution to the early history of ‘extended’ monastic rules

Abstract

This article focuses on the lost Typikon of the Constantinopolitan monastery of Panagiou, which was composed in the first quarter of the eleventh century by the abbot Anthony, a former disciple of Athanasius the Athonite. The Panagiou Typikon is of crucial importance for a proper understanding of the Middle Byzantine monastic discourse since it is one of the earliest rules promoting a strictly coenobitic agenda. The article has two objectives: it seeks to recover some of the contents of the Panagiou Typikon through identification of textual parallels in a later adaptation, Gregory Pakourianos’ Petritzos Typikon, and in Vita A of Athanasius the Athonite by the monk Athanasius of Panagiou; and it offers a partial reconstruction of its structure through comparison with the Typikon of Patriarch Alexius the Studite, which is based on a lost Typikon for the Stoudios monastery, and with the Evergetis Typikon and its derivatives.