Rare word #22: Procrustean

With so much talk of the diptychs and the history associated with the removal and addition of names from it, I thought I'd pick up Taft's "A History of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, Volume IV, The Diptychs" to reacquaint myself with the history and theological importance of diptychs and intercessions. As is common when one reads Taft, there is a line that entertains or informs in the manner unique to his wit.

"Indeed, as we shall see, diptychs show far more variety than their different placement alone would indicate. So words are words and things are things, and we must not allow categories and nomenclature of our own devising to become a procrustean bed."

His point is well taken both in reference to the dangers of applying terminology without regard to the actual organizational mindset that it was built upon and to the relative convenience such neoteric methods afford. Clergy and cantors find themselves daily having to force things of wildly differing shapes and sizes into boxes of certain dimensions. Sometimes the decisions follow some prescribed formula and sometimes decisions are made on the fly. There's a place for both when mitigated by proper preparation before the services begin - not so much when the stuffing of an irregularly shaped or exotic thing is the result of no preparation done at all (as with music, pronunciations, rarely used rubrics). It is important to know why we began doing something, why we do it the way we do now, and how to find respectful harmony within the two. Otherwise we find ourselves, like Procustes, cut off at the knees with no means of escape or good excuse for how we got into such a situation in the first place.

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Procrustean - (especially of a framework or system) enforcing uniformity or conformity without regard to natural variation or individuality: a fixed Procrustean rule.

In Greek mythology, Procrustes was a robber who lived near the city of Eleusis. He invited travelers to spend the night, offering them his hospitality.

However, as soon as the travelers were in his house, Procrustes would tie them to an iron bed. If they were shorter than the bed, he would stretch them on a rack until they were as long as the bed. If the guests were taller than the bed, Procrustes would cut off their legs until they fit. In either case, his victims died. Procrustes met his end at the hands of the Greek hero Theseus, who killed him the same way that the robber took care of his victims. Today the term Procrustean bed means a standard or set of conditions, determined arbitrarily, to which everyone is forced to conform.

Greek prokroustēs (προκρούστης), literally ‘stretcher’, from prokrouei (προσκρούει) ‘beat out’.