TRISAGION

TRISAGION. This term applies first of all to the biblical thrice holy (q.v.) of Is 6:3 and Rev 4:8, the hymn of the heavenly liturgy. It appears as the Sanctus in the eucharistic liturgy of both the East and West. In the East the same expression also applies to the hymn that repeats three times the petition, “Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy upon us,” which is normally sung following the “little entrance” prior to the Epistle reading at the Divine Liturgy (q.v.). (The origin of this form of the hymn is associated with 25 September ca. 450 when a great earthquake ceased in Constantinople.) The hymn became cause for debate during the christological controversies of the late 5th c. Between 468 and 470, the “monophysite” Patriarch of Antioch (qq.v.), Peter the Fuller, introduced the phrase, “Who was crucified for us,” following “Holy Immortal . . .” Defenders of Chalcedon (q.v.) objected to this christological reading of the hymn, i.e., as referring all three titles to Christ, and insisted on it instead as in praise of the Trinity (q.v.), denouncing the interpolation as an unacceptable mingling of the persons of the Godhead. The hymn is sung in the Oriental Orthodox churches (q.v.) to the present in its interpolated form, and in Eastern Orthodox churches in the original version.