The “Akolouthia” records the religious worship that takes place in church and aims to praise the saint on the day that his memory is being celebrated. The printed “Akolouthies” usually have the form of a simple pamphlet or humble booklet (hence they are usually referred in Greek as “φυλλάδες”). The Dory Papastratou collection consists of 665 “Akolouthies” pamphlets and several books, which contain smaller or larger compilations of “Akolouthies” dedicated to one or different saints and to feast days with common characteristics.
Dory Papastratou collected a corpus of printed “Akolouthies” that was donated to the Gennadius Library by her daughters Daphne and Marina Heliades. The collection was catalogued by Demosthenes Stratigopoulos and published as Ἔντυπες Ἀκολουθίες Ἁγίων, Συλλογὴ Ντόρης Παπαστράτου” (Αθήνα 2007) under the scholarly supervision of Kriton Chryssochoidis (Research Director at the Institute for Byzantine Research of the National Hellenic Research Foundation). This edition supplements that of Louis Petit, Bibliographie des acolouthies grecques [Subsidia Hagiographica 16] (Bruxelles 1926). The material was digitized thanks to a grant from the Demos Foundation.
