Who Wakes the Waker? The Monastic Relationship to Time in Byzantium

ABSTRACT: Byzantine monks had close relationships with time, and they were intimately aware of how it was measured. Using both textual and material sources, this article examines the different ways the designated “timekeepers” of monasteries used time to signal prayer throughout the day and night. Concentrating on Middle Byzantine monasteries from Constantinople, it illustrates the different methods of telling time that would have been available to Byzantine monks and the objects they may have used, and it investigates the complications that came with the changing length of days, nights, and hours throughout the year, as well as the complicated liturgical organization of days and years laid out in typika and horologia . These aspects monastic life demonstrate that the monks understood how to work with time and manipulate it in order to conform to their liturgical and ascetic obligations.