ABOUT SYNAXIS.INFO

This Web site has been inspired by several parts of my life and is a product of my personal and professional interests, particularly as an Orthodox Christian educator, ethnomusicologist and "amateur" liturgist. For some time I have felt a need to organize my notes from personal studies and my final written projects, in order to pass these on to the world at large. There is simply no need of storing this information in filing cabinets and in electronic archives if no one will ever benefit from what God has granted me the strength and wit to write about. After all, if we do not dedicate our talents, skills and labours to God and to His Holy Church, then we are but hiding our "talents" in the sand and will receive no return on our investment. With this in mind, I freely and humbly offer back to God what He has given me.

SYNAXIS.INFO attempts to provide resources for a number of intimately related fields of study:

SYNAXIS is dedicated to providing resources for those who are liturgists (clergy, choir directors, ecclesiarchs/ustavshchiki, scholars, etc.) and all who are interested in Eastern Orthodox Christian liturgics. There are five areas of focus: Orthodox Liturgical Texts - collection of liturgical texts, Orthodox Domestic Prayers - Prayer Book materials, Paraliturgical Literature - paraliturgical and reference sources, Reference Desk, and a variety of Miscellaneous Categorized Topics.

APOSTOL is dedicated to providing Orthodox Christian Educational Materials, including Biblical Studies, Literary Sources, Patrology, Hagiography, Spirituality, Church Law, Service, Iconography, etc.

PSALOM is the home of the Traditional Eastern Orthodox Chant Documentation Project. It is a Web site for Orthodox musicologists, as a research tool, an archive of original source materials, and a place for guest musicologists to make their writings available to their colleagues. Of great importance to the Orthodox music community is the ability to identify and become familiar with all the various regional chanting systems, which is one of the prime goals of the Chant Documentation Project.

TYPICON is the official web site for the Typicon Translation Project. The Orthodox Church in the English-speaking world is impoverished by a lack of this essential text, which is used to guide liturgists in how to put the divine serves together. The aim of this project is to coordinate a group of like-minded volunteers to present a draft translation of the entire text in English, with commentaries and supplemental research materials. This project is currently a members-only group, but as time goes on I hope to make it open to the public. Because many of the supportive areas of research generated by this project are of interest to a wide range of liturgists, musicians, clergy, historians, educators, etc., I wish to make many of these resources available to all who might benefit from them.

AZBUKA offers a wide variety of Church Slavonic Language Resources, including instructional materials, calligraphy and manuscript resources, printing and typography, computer fonts, language and literature, etc.

STOGLAV is dedicated to providing resources in Medieval Russian Studies, including the following subjects: Art and Architecture, Economics, Domestic Studies, Government, History, Old Church Slavonic Language and Literature, Folk Music, Folk Religion, Mythology and Folklore, Folk Calendars, and Miscellaneous.

OLD-RITE is devoted to the study of pre-Nikonian Russian liturgics and spirituality (pre-1667 A.D.), as preserved by the Russian Old Believers. (More details will be added here as I begin to develop the site and achieve some focus.)

TECHNICAL NOTES: Even though I am a somewhat experienced Web site designer, I have decided to keep graphics and design at a bare minimum, with a focus upon simplicity, clarity, and rapid access to pages. The majority of HTML pages at this web site have the Windows CP-1251 Russian encoding. For pages in English, the average reader will not notice a difference, but this process will allow all pages with Cyrillic text to be viewed properly. Some pages may contain text in both languages. I apologize to all readers who cannot read Russian, but I simply do not have the time, energy and translations skills necessary to maintain a fully bilingual Web site.

Throughout the Web site there are links to sources on other Web sites. Over time I will attempt to contact the Webmasters of some of the sites that host valuable materials (particularly in Russia) and request permission to mirror that information directly on this site. The reason for this is because several excellent Web sites which have lacked sufficient funding have disappeared or moved to other servers and not been found again (which is indeed very frustrating). Other Web sites seem to be available only on an intermittent basis or during certain times of the day. The more Web sites that host and archive valuable information, the better the chances of ensuring its survival.

DISCLAIMER: This Web site is owned by Nikita Simmons, a Russian Orthodox Old Believer living in Woodburn, Oregon, U.S.A. Despite my jurisdictional affiliation, I wish to stress that this web site has no official ties or endorsement with any ecclesiastical jurisdiction, nor is it intended as a place of propaganda or controversy. The sole intent and purpose of this Web site is RESEARCH. If there is any personal agenda, I will state here that I am a fairly conservative traditionalist in matters of Orthodox beliefs and practices, and I try to avoid any modernist and unrealistic or unfounded "reconstructionist" approaches to the Orthodox Faith. Therefore, on this Web site most texts of hymns and prayers will contain traditional liturgical English (thee/thou) as opposed to modern translations ("you-who" style). Unless specified otherwise, all liturgical texts on this Web site will be according to the Russian New Rite (post-Nikonian) or the received Greek Byzantine texts; Russian Old Rite texts will be found in the Old-Rite section of this Web site.
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