These amazing chants caress the human soul, exposing it to goodness, light and beauty, assuaging suffering and implanting in it the great meaning of Life. The tradition of monophonic church singing came to Russia from Byzantium as the most important aspect of the divine service. The history of the origins of Russian church singing has come down thanks to the chronicler of the Book of Degrees. The oldest chant of the Russian Orthodox Church is teh znamenniy chant. Its name derives from the Slavonic word ''znamya''. The maliy chant appeared as a counterbalance to the bol'shoy, being an abbreviated version of the znamenniy chant. The works of Russian chant writers have remained basically anonymous to this day; only certain names have come down through the ages.