Liturgies of the Coptic Orthodox Church

The Liturgies of the Coptic Orthodox Church project is a set of detailed documents and presentations for use in the various liturgies and services of the Coptic Orthodox Church.

Since the only reliable databases for Coptic hymns and liturgies don’t lend themselves well to use in an actual service, such as Tasbeha.org or the Southern United States Diocese’s Coptic Reader, I’ve taken up re-writing and proofreading the existing documents to be more unified in style, phrasing, and organization, as well as reprinting.

You can access all the relevant files and more on Google Drive through this link: tiny.cc/liturgyCOC, or you can browse through the files here. Note that the previews in Google Drive do not display embedded fonts properly, so you have to download the file for proper display.

How To Use LiturgyCOC

Locating Hymns

To locate a hymn in one of the files, use the Hymn Lookup spreadsheet; it’s a little bare bones, but should be enough to find whatever you’re looking for.

Documents and Presentations

Documents are PDFs which can be printed, bound, and distributed as physical copies, or scrolled through on a computer or mobile device. Presentations are PowerPoint presentations which can be displayed during services or when following along. They’re much easier to navigate on the fly, and are easier to read (especially in the dark).

Supporting Documents

Every presentation has a hidden slide near the beginning which lists the other required presentations. Links in the presentation are colored blue if they link to a slide in the same presentation, and red if they link to a slide in a different presentation.

Note that, at the moment, presentations must be kept in a specific folder/directory hierarchy for inter-presentation links to work properly. In the future, there might be a .zip file available for download which has a file menu and the folder hierarchy built-in. This won’t happen until most documents and presentations are complete, which will probably take a while.

Hymns sung only for the Pope and Bishops are in a separate presentation, “Annual – Papal Hymns.” While presentations include links to this presentation when possible, it will not work unless the Papal Hymns presentation is in your main presentation directory.

Colors

• Orange is used to represent the People, which is a combination of the Congregation and the Chanter deacons in front of the Iconostasis.
• Green is used to represent the Reader deacons.
• Red is used to represent the Subdeacons serving in the Altar or a sole Chanter/Reader deacon, such as in the Reenactment of the Resurrection.
• Blue is used to represent the Priests.
• Purple is used to represent the Pope or any Bishops and Metropolitans who are present.

Paragraphs written in lighter shades of those colors are antiphonary hymns, where two groups alternate stanzas of a hymn, usually between the North and South sides of the People.

Hymn section headers are written in light gray. Notes or messages are written in dark gray.

Downloads

* I’m classifying these by number of special hymns and practices, not by their significance to the church (although there is a mild correlation between those things).

Updates

Coming Soon

• [Presentations]
  Add option to switch between the Saint Basil and Saint Gregory liturgies.
• [Document | Feast of the Nativity]
  Start document.

2021 December

[12/9/2021] Updated “Annual – Midnight Praises” document to revision 2.5 and presentation to revision 0.4. Switched English translation for the Sunday Psali, and fixed incorrect antiphonary highlighting in some hymns.

2021 July

[7/29/2021] Updated “Annual – Midnight Praises” document, revision 2.4 and presentation, revision 0.3. Corrected Arabic and other various errors.

2021 June

[6/28/2021] Updated “Annual – Midnight Praises” document, revision 2.3 and presentation, revision 0.1. Corrected two typos and released presentation.

2021 May

[5/22/2021] Updated “Annual – Midnight Praises” document, revision 2.2. Corrected typos in Coptic text and fixed minor formatting errors.

2021 March

[3/27/2021] Updated “Annual – Midnight Praises” document, revision 2.1. Fixed inconsistent alignment in table of contents, corrected various typos. Switched English translations for some hymns. Added [risen] to relevant verses. Added rest of the Sunday Theotokia (parts 1 through 15), the Batos Psali for the Three Holy Youth, and the Sunday Psali for Saint Mary. Moved Commemoration of the Saints into separate block.

[3/20/2021] Updated “Annual – Midnight Praises” document, revision 2.0. Fixed incorrect table of content pages, corrected handful of typos. Headers with Coptic have been changed to use Unicode, so built-in section skipping displays properly.

[3/13/2021] Updated “Annual – Midnight Praises” document, revision 1.5. Added table of contents, updated headers to use Coptic Unicode. This version has also been printed as a prototype.

2021 February

[2/27/2021] Updated “Annual – Midnight Praises” document, revision 1.4.
[2/13/2021] Updated “Annual – Midnight Praises” document, revision 1.2.
[2/12/2021] Released “Annual – Midnight Praises” document, revision 1.0.

2021 January

[1/3/2021] Released Kiahk Vigil document, revision 0.7. It has been done! After several months of work, the Kiahk Vigil doc has reached a point that I feel comfortable saying it is no longer a work-in-progress. Not every hymn has been added, and not everything has Arabic, but this should suffice for most purposes. I will continue to update the doc throughout the year, though I won’t be putting full focus on it.

[1/2/2021] Updated Kiahk Vigil document, revision 0.6. Finally includes Arabic for nearly all hymns (except psalmodies). Completed the Second Watch; added and renamed the Sunday Psalies, Melody, and Psalmody. Added all the Conclusion of Praises.

2020 December

[12/29/2020] Updated Kiahk Vigil document, revision 0.5. Now includes much more Arabic, though not all hymns have been added. Completed the Sunday Theotokia. Added the First Sunday Psali.

[12/19/2020] Updated Kiahk Vigil document, revision 0.4. Now includes all of Vespers, some of the All-Night Vigil, nearly all of the Midnight Praises (missing a few psalmodies and the rest of the Sunday Theotokia). The Conclusion of the Adam Theotokias and the Morning Praises have not been added. Added “The Hymn of I Praise the Virgin,” though missing Arabic.