DIPTYCH

diptych (dip-tik), n.[fr. Greek diptycha “two-leaved”] 1.Roman law. Two tablets usu. made of

wood or metal and tied with string through holes at the edges so that they could fold over (like a

book  with  two  leaves).  •  Diptychs  were  often  used  to  send  letters,  and  the  text  was  sometimes

written using a stylus, once on the inside waxed leaves and again on the outside, so that it could be

read without opening the tablets. 2.Hist. Eccles. law. Tablets used by the church, esp. to register

names of  those  making  supplication,  and  to  record  births,  marriages, and  deaths. 3.Hist. Eccles.

law. The registry of those names.

“The recitation of the name of any prelate or civil ruler in the diptychs was a recognition of

his orthodoxy; its omission, the reverse. The  mention of a person after  death recognized  him as

having  died  in  the  communion  of  the  church,  and  the  introduction  of  his  name  into  the  list  of

saints  or  martyrs  constituted  canonization.  In  liturgics  the  diptychs  are  distinguished  as  the

diptychs of the living and the diptychs of the dead, the latter including also the commemoration of

the  saints ….  In  the  Western  Church  the  use  of  the  diptychs  died  out between  the  ninth  and  the

twelfth  century;  in  the  Eastern  Church  it  still  continues.”  2  The  Century  Dictionary  and  Cyclopedia (1895).

“Diptychs were used in the time of the Roman empire for sending letters …. The consula and

quaestors used, on assuming office, to send diptychs containing their names and portraits to their

friends  ….  The  early  Christians  used  tablets  thus  made  in  the  celebration  of  divine  worship  ….

They were placed on … the pulpits, or reading desks, which may still be seen in ancient basilicas

at  the  west end  of  the  choir  or  presbytery; and  from  them  were read  to  the  congregation  of  the

faithful the  names of the celebrating  priests, of those who  occupied the superior positions in the

Christian  hierarchy,  of the saints, martyrs, and confessors, and, in  process of time, also  of  those

who had died in the faith…. The inscription on the diptychs of deaths and baptisms, naturally led

to  the  insertion  of  dates, and  the  diptychs seem  thus to  have grown  into  calendars, and  to  have

been  the  germ  from  which  necrologies,  lists  of  saints,  and  almanacs  have  been  developed.”  7

Encyclopaedia Britannica 223–24 (9th ed. 1907). [Blacks Law 8th]