Writing about Orthodox heritage in the Holy Land draws on three vocabularies at once: the technical language of architecture, the Greek terms of the service books, and the working words of the manuscript and painting workshop. This glossary collects the terms most often met on this site and gives each a short, plain definition, descriptive rather than devotional.
Definitions are grouped by subject rather than alphabetically, so that related words sit together. The building vocabulary is used throughout our account of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the musical terms recur on the page about Byzantine chant.
Architecture and the parts of a church
Most of these words reached English through Latin and Greek architectural writing, and several describe features that the Holy Land churches did much to popularise; the wider tradition is outlined in the reference article on Byzantine art.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Aedicule | A small free-standing shrine or canopied structure; in Jerusalem, the chamber enclosing the tomb. |
| Ambulatory | A walkway curving behind the sanctuary that lets visitors circulate without crossing it. |
| Anastasis | Greek for resurrection; used both of the rotunda over the tomb and of an image type. |
| Apse | A semicircular recess roofed with a half-dome, closing a nave or chapel. |
| Atrium | An open colonnaded court in front of a basilica, used for assembly and entry. |
| Basilica | A long rectangular hall with nave and aisles, adapted from Roman civic architecture. |
| Katholikon | The principal church of a monastery, or the main choir space within a complex. Also catholicon. |
| Chancel | The part of a church containing the altar, usually raised and screened from the nave. |
| Ciborium | A canopy carried on four columns standing over an altar or a tomb. |
| Diakonikon | A chamber south of the sanctuary, storing vestments, books and vessels. |
| Exonarthex | An outer porch in front of the narthex, forming a second threshold. |
| Martyrium | A building raised over a place of burial or witness, often centrally planned. |
| Narthex | A vestibule running across the entrance end of a church. |
| Parekklesion | A subsidiary chapel attached to a larger church, often added later and separately decorated. |
| Prothesis | A table or chamber north of the sanctuary where bread and wine are prepared. |
| Rotunda | A circular building or space, generally domed; the Jerusalem rotunda is the defining example. |
| Templon | A low screen of columns and beams between sanctuary and nave in Byzantine churches. |
| Iconostasis | The tiered screen of icons that developed out of the templon after the eleventh century. |
Monastic life and landscape
The desert houses generated a vocabulary of their own, part architectural and part geographical, which is used throughout our account of the monasteries of the Judean desert.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Laura | A monastic settlement of separate cells around a shared core, whose members gathered weekly. |
| Coenobium | A monastery of fully common life, with shared meals, work and services. Also cenobium. |
| Typikon | A rule book setting out the order of services and the discipline of a house. |
| Wadi | A valley or watercourse dry except after rain; several desert houses occupy their cliffs. |
Chant, hymnography and the service books
These terms name both musical forms and the volumes that contain them; the eight-mode system behind them is explained in the reference article on Byzantine chant.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Troparion | A short hymn stanza, the basic unit of Byzantine hymnography. |
| Sticheron | A hymn stanza sung between the verses of a psalm. |
| Kanon | An extended hymn of eight or nine odes tied to the scriptural canticles. |
| Kontakion | A long sung poem in many stanzas with a recurring refrain. |
| Octoechos | The eight-mode system, and the book distributing hymns across an eight-week cycle. |
| Ison | The sustained drone note held beneath a chant melody. |
| Neume | A sign indicating melodic movement rather than absolute pitch, written above the text. |
| Synaxarion | A compilation of short commemorative notices arranged by calendar date. |
Manuscripts, painting and materials
The last group belongs to the workshop and the library. These words appear constantly in catalogue records such as the British Library catalogue of illuminated manuscripts, and in the technical literature behind our pages on manuscripts, libraries and treasury and Byzantine iconography.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Majuscule | A formal script written entirely in capitals, standard in Greek books until about the ninth century. |
| Minuscule | The smaller connected script that replaced majuscule, faster to write and economical of parchment. |
| Palimpsest | A leaf whose original writing was scraped away for reuse; imaging can often recover it. |
| Gesso | A ground of chalk and animal glue laid on a panel before gilding and painting. |
| Pantocrator | An image type showing Christ as ruler of all, placed in a dome or apse. |
A note on spelling
Greek terms reach English by several routes, so the same word appears in Latinised, transliterated or anglicised form: katholikon and catholicon, coenobium and cenobium, typikon and typicon are all current in print. This resource prefers the transliterated Greek form and notes the common alternative, but readers consulting older catalogues should expect variation.