Romanos the Melodist
The Protection of the Mother of God , which falls on the same day.Sometimes he is depicted as a deacon holding a censer in his right hand and a small model of a church in his left. | |
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Patronage | Music |
Romanos the Melodist (
Life
The main source of information about the life of Romanos comes from the
He later moved to
If those scholars who believe that he lived during the reign of the earlier Anastasius are correct, then he may have continued writing during the reign of Emperor
Legend
According to legend, Romanus was not at first considered to be either a talented
Works
Romanos wrote in an Atticized literary
He is said to have composed more than 1,000
Today, usually only the first
Among his known works are kontakia on:
- The Nativity of Christ
- The St Stephen
- The Death of a Monk
- The Last Judgment
- The Prodigal Son
- The Raising of Lazarus (for Lazarus Saturday, the day before Palm Sunday)
- Adam's Lament (for Palm Sunday)
- The Treachery of Judas
His Kontakion of the Nativity is still considered to be his masterpiece, and up until the twelfth century it was sung every year at the imperial banquet on that feast by the joint choirs of Hagia Sophia and of the
Of his other Kontakia, one of the most well-known is the hymn, "My soul, my soul, why sleepest thou..."[8] which is chanted as part of the service of the "Great Canon" of Andrew of Crete on the fifth Thursday of Great Lent.
Romanos is one of many persons who have been credited with composing the famous Akathist Hymn to the Theotokos, which is still sung during Great Lent. Most recent scholarship has asserted that he is not the author of the hymn, although there is significant dissent among scholars.[9]
Karl Krumbacher published in Munich several previously unpublished chants of Romanos and other hymnographers, from manuscripts discovered in the library of the Monastery of St John the Theologian in Patmos. There exists in the library of Moscow a Greek manuscript which contains kontakia and oikoi for the whole year, but does not include all compositions of Romanos.
Krumbacher says of his work:
In poetic talent, fire of inspiration, depth of feeling, and elevation of language, he far surpasses all the other melodes. The literary history of the future will perhaps acclaim Romanos for the greatest ecclesiastical poet of all ages.
Legacy and depictions
Although in more recent icons Saint Romanos is depicted standing on the ambo (directly in front of the
In the Eastern Orthodox Church, Saint Romanos is the patron saint of music; he is celebrated yearly on 1 October.[1]
The
Editions and translations
- Poems about Women. Ed. and trans. Thomas Arentzen. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 83. Cambridge, Mass., 2024. (18 kontakia)
- Sancti Romani Melodi Cantica. Vol. 1: Cantica Genuina. – Vol. 2: Cantica Dubia. Ed. by Constantine A. Trypanis. Oxford, 1963–1970. (complete edition)
- J. B. Pitra, Analecta Sacra, i. (1876), containing 29 poems, and Sanctus Romanus Veterum Melodorum Princeps (1888), with three additional hymns from the Monastery at Patmos. See also Pitra's Hymnographie de l'église grecque (1867)
- Karl Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur (Munich, 1897)
- —Studien zu Romanos (Munich, 1899)
- —Umarbeitungen bei Romanos (Munich, 1899)
Notes
- ^ a b c d e Engberg 2001.
- ^ (in Greek) Great Synaxaristes: Ὁ Ὅσιος Ῥωμανὸς ὁ Μελῳδός. 1 Οκτωβρίου. ΜΕΓΑΣ ΣΥΝΑΞΑΡΙΣΤΗΣ.
- ^ a b Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 23 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 576–577.
- ^ a b Mellas 2020, pp. 24–25.
- ^ Levy 2001.
- ^ Krumbacher, Gesch. d. byz. Literatur, (Munich, 1897), pp. 312-18.
- ISBN 90-04-07809-6
- Ancient Greek: Ψυχή μου, ψυχή μου, ἀνάστα, τί καθεύδεις; τὸ τέλος ἐγγίζει καὶ μέλλεις θορυβεῖσθαι· ἀνάνηψον οὖν, ἵνα φείσηταί σου Χριστὸς ὁ Θεός, ὁ πανταχοῦ παρὼν καὶ τὰ πάντα πληρῶν, lit.'Arise, O my soul, O my soul, why sleepest thou? The end draweth near, and thou must speak. Arise, therefore, from thy sleep, and Christ our God, who is in all places and filleth all things, shall spare thee.'
- ^ See page 81, note 13 in Sarah Gador-Whyte, “Changing Conceptions of Mary in Sixth-Century Byzantium: The Kontakia of Romanos the Melodist,” in Questions of Gender in Byzantine Society, edited by Bronwen Neil and Lynda Garland, 77–92 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013).
- ^ Domar: the calendrical and liturgical cycle of the Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Church, Armenian Orthodox Theological Research Institute, 2002, p. 505.
References
- Romanos the Melodist article from the Catholic Encyclopedia
- St. Romanos (Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia)
- Engberg, Gudrun (2001). "Romanos the Melodist". ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0. (subscription or UK public library membershiprequired)
- Levy, Kenneth (2001). "Byzantine Chant". ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0.
- Schork, R. J. (1962). "Typology in the Kontakia of Romanos". Studia Patristica. 6 (Papers presented to the Third International Conference on Patristic Studies held at Christ Church, Oxford, 1959, Part IV Theologica, Augustiniana, ed. F. L. Cross). Berlin: Akademie-Verlag: 210–220.
- Mellas, Andrew (2020). Liturgy and the Emotions in Byzantium: Compunction and Hymnody. Cambridge: S2CID 225623021.
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Romanos". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 23 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 576–577. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
Further reading
- Thomas Arentzen, The Virgin in Song: Mary and the Poetry of Romanos the Melodist (Philadelphia, 2017)
- Sarah Gador-Whyte, Theology and Poetry in Early Byzantium: The Kontakia of Romanos the Melodist (Cambridge UK, 2017)
- José Grosdidier de Matons, Romanos le Mélode et les origines de la poésie religieuse à Byzance (Paris, 1977)
- Koder, Johannes (2008). "Imperial Propaganda in the Kontakia of Romanos the Melode". Dumbarton Oaks Papers. 62: 275–291, 281. JSTOR 20788050.
External links
- Media related to Romanos the Melodist at Wikimedia Commons
- Works by Romanos the Melodist at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- The Kontakia of Romanos 71 selections
- Digitalized manuscripts of Romanos the Melodist at the Princeton University Library