Papaioannou Sacred Song Oxford Handbook

Chapter 18
Sacred S ong
Stratis Papaioannou
The tenth-century dictionary known as the Suda glosses the archaic word “ἀοιδός”—
meaning singer/soloist, as well as song-writer/composer—with its Byzantine equivalent
“μελῳδός” (Suda α 4402).1 Then, almost as an afterthought, the entry explains ἀοιδός
further as “καὶ ὁ ποιητής = and also a poet.” This afterthought echoes a long tradition
in pre-modern literatures, according to which poetry was associated with singing and
performance, just as rhythmical speech was linked with music. Though it is not the place
here to survey this centuries-old placement of poetry within musical and performative
culture, a topic about which much has been written (for the Greek variety see, e.g., Ford
2002), such habits of thought and the practices which inspired them offer us an impor-
tant starting point as we approach Byzantine poetry.
As may be apparent from the preceding chapters, much Byzantine versification was
created and consumed without any ties to music. Indeed, a great many Byzantine poems
were not even intended for performance, but rather served other needs, such as inscrip-
tion, display, or memorization. Thus much poetry was often primarily a matter of seeing
or internalizing and only secondarily (if at all) a matter of listening.
What happens to the Greek tradition of poetry as song, however? That tradition
seems to bifurcate. The classical Greek genres—originally genres of song and perfor-
mance (such as epic, iamb, and elegy: the recital of heroic poetry, songs of abuse, and
songs of lament, respectively)—were quickly ossified into non-musical literary, written,
or, one might say, “textualized” types of versification. For these post-classical types, it
was textual form (i.e., specific types of meter such as the hexameter, iambic trimeter,
the elegiac couplet, etc.) rather than performative occasion that defined each genre.
1 I am indebted to Wolfram Hörandner and Andreas Rhoby who, early in the writing of this chapter,
provided material regarding hymnographical metrics; I am also indebted to Sandra Martani who did the
same regarding musicological matters. Thanks are furthermore owed to Susan Harvey for commenting
on several aspects of the chapter, Dimitris Skrekas for bibliographical suggestions, and Céline Grassien
for sharing her dissertation on early hymnography before publication. The chapter is dedicated to my
son Αλέξη, who kept me company during the long nights of researching for this piece.
Sacred Song 431
The process was already well underway during the Hellenistic period. Byzantine poets
simply continued and eventually transformed it. The Byzantine transformation lay in
the introduction of new formal patterns, namely stress regulation and verses with equal
number of syllables—or, to use Byzantine terms, homotony and isosyllaby. These new
patterns came to prevail over ancient prosody, the sequence, that is, of metrically long
and short syllables; yet these genres of poetry continued to be primarily textual types of
versification, sometimes used for performative pieces, but rarely as songs, accompanied
by music.
Simultaneously, however, new poetry associated with singing developed as well. This
was what one, probably middle Byzantine, text calls “ᾀσματικὰ ποιήματα,” namely “song
poetry” (Scholia on the Prolegomena of the Art of Grammar 569.40). Such poetry usually
disregarded ancient formal requirements and tapped into new resources of form, such
as rhythmical and melodic patterns of non-Greek religious discourse and, apparently,
folk songs. Two primary types of this new musical poetry are discernible:
(a) Non-ecclesiastical songs whose characteristic (though by no means exclusive)

metrical form, at least since the middle Byzantine period, seems to have been the
fifteen-syllable, i.e. “political,” verse.
(b) Sacred songs, especially Christian chants, what we usually refer to as Byzantine
hymnography.
With few exceptions, the lyrics and, without exception, the melodies of actual
Byzantine secular songs in fifteen-syllable or other accentual meters are lost to us.2 We
find traces of this kind of poetry in texts that reflect its adoption in either socially or dis-
cursively higher registers from the middle Byzantine period onward—I am referring to
some court poetry from the tenth century, much didactic poetry of the eleventh cen-
tury, and in the many so-called vernacular poems that survive from the late period, all
written in “political” verse (Lauxtermann 1999). Though formally related to musical po-
etry, most of the fifteen-syllable poetry copied in Byzantine manuscripts was neverthe-
less actually unrelated to song; that is, we know these kinds of secular song-originating
poetic forms primarily through their non-musical variety.
By contrast, sacred songs, linked as they were with the ritual life of Byzantine
Christianity, have been preserved in impressive numbers. Over 60,000 hymns are
available in print, an estimate based on Follieri’s six-volume Initia hymnorum ecclesiae
graecae (IHEG),3 and several thousand more are preserved in manuscripts that remain
unpublished. Admittedly, liturgical poetry too was to some extent textualized; it often
2 On Byzantine secular songs and on the fifteen-syllable and other accentual meters, see, respectively,
Messis and Papaioannou, “Orality and Textuality,” Chapter 9, and Hörandner and Rhoby, “Metrics and
Prose Rhythm,” Chapter 17, in this volume. For the particular case of hymns in fifteen-syllable, see later
discussion in this chapter.
3 Though the number is somewhat misleading as the IHEG counts stanzas of polystrophic hymns as
individual hymns.
432 Stratis Papaioannou
adopted, that is, the rhetorical aesthetics of Byzantine prose as well as non-liturgical
verse, and it was even cast occasionally in the meters of the latter. Nevertheless, liturgical
poetry always retained its indissoluble connection with singing. Byzantine hymns were
in essence lyrics linked to specific melodies and intended for performance in the context
of Christian ritual.
This new poetry and, for the first time in the history of Greek literature, the musical
notation that recorded the accompanying melodies have been preserved in substan-
tial amounts. About 1200 to 1500 (especially late) Byzantine and several more thou-
sand post-Byzantine liturgical manuscripts with musical notation—or, to use again
the Byzantine terms, with τόνους and σημάδια—have survived (Levy and Troeslgård,
“Byzantine Chant” n.d., with Alexandru 2017: 43–51, where also a typology of Byzantine
musical manuscripts is offered). These manuscripts archive a musical tradition whose
continuation extends to the present in contemporary monophonic (unison plainsong)
chant, without recourse to instrumental accompaniment. Such chants are employed
in many of the Christian churches that follow some variety of the Byzantine Orthodox
rite in the eastern Mediterranean, the Balkans, and worldwide. After all, of all types of
Byzantine literature, hymnography is the only one that remains a living tradition as new
hymns for new saints continue to be written in the traditional Byzantine idiom and style.
The song literature of Byzantium that we can reconstruct with some detail is the po-
etry of religious devotion and communal worship. Or, to put it from a different perspec-
tive: for the average Byzantines, especially those without much exposure to advanced
education, poetry was, first and foremost, the chants heard in various liturgical services.
The present chapter surveys the primary forms that Christian sacred song took
in Byzantium. The purpose is not to merely replicate the concise surveys that have
appeared recently on the subject (see the Suggestions for Further Reading at the end
of the chapter)—though much information will naturally overlap with these surveys.
Nor is it to provide a comprehensive history of Byzantine hymnography—though some
chronological frame will emerge as we proceed from earlier to later forms. Rather, the
primary intention is to approach hymnography as a literary form, presented in relation
to the relevant manuscript evidence, liturgical practice, and music, thus aiming as much
as possible toward a view of Byzantine sacred songs from within. Along the way, we
shall identify problems and questions, as well as areas for further investigation within
the field of Byzantine hymnography. Let us begin with some such problems.
The Challenges
We catch the development of Greek Christian hymnography in medias res. The over-
whelming majority of the thousands hymns that have been preserved (published and
unpublished) date after the early eighth century. Tracing the melody of these hymns
begins even later for us. Until the mid-twelfth century, different kinds of musical,
Sacred Song 433
mnemotechnic notation exist in rather isolated examples (cf. Martani, “Recitation and
Chant,” Chapter 19 in this volume, with Gertsman 2001), from the third-/fourth-century
papyrus of a Christian hymn, to the relatively few manuscripts with the so-called
Palaeobyzantine notation (e.g., Athos, Lavra Γ 67 from about the mid-tenth century; cf.
also Figure 18.3 later in this chapter). The bulk of the manuscript evidence with recover-
able melodies begins to grow only after the mid-twelfth century. This is when a new no-
tation was introduced, the so-called Middle Byzantine notation (e.g., Sinai gr. 756, dated
to 1205; cf. also Figure 19.2 in Chapter 19 of this volume), that remained in use until the
beginning of the nineteenth century. In fact, the majority of the examples of this nota-
tion are post-Byzantine—for instance, 90 percent of musical manuscripts in libraries
of the Athonite monasteries date from after the year 1500 (they are cataloged in Stathis
1975–).
Late evidence is just one of the problems that we face, however. Another οbstacle
arises from a long and still evolving liturgical practice that tends to obscure its early
history. Byzantine hymns are rarely available in critical editions. Most are still acces-
sible only through the early printed liturgical books and their successors currently
in use in the Greek Orthodox church. These books naturally organize and present
hymnographical material according to the demands of ritual practices as these were
developed over the course of centuries. They are thus not so much concerned, in any
consistent or detailed manner at least, with identifying or recording the original text or
original melodies of hymns, or the historical details of their creation, nor, of course, do
they preserve Byzantine hymnography in its totality. Byzantine liturgical and musical
manuscripts, which also usually post-date by many centuries the texts and the melodies
they preserve, usually filter hymnography in a similar fashion—after all, the printed li-
turgical books were based on few specific late Byzantine manuscripts.
It is no surprise that the history of Byzantine sacred songs is, from many perspectives,
a story as yet untold, full of gaps and questions, still awaiting their answers, and
challenges that burden related research. To the often poorly preserved and studied ev-
idence, we must add: (a) the immensity of this literary production; (b) the need to en-
gage with medieval hymnography in other languages—especially Syriac, Armenian,
Georgian, and Church Slavonic—that often retain forms and practices that were
adopted/translated from Greek but then disappeared from the Greek tradition (D’Aiuto
2004: 294–297); (c) the frequency of local variation and regional traditions in liturgical
practice; and, of course, (d) the fragmentation of this research field among philologists,
musicologists, and liturgiologists since the history of Byzantine hymnography shares its
gaps with the histories of Byzantine music and the Byzantine rite with both of which it
forms an indissoluble whole.
Leaving such a history and its challenges to future work, it may suffice to highlight
here this last aspect of Byzantine hymnography. Hymns, that is, are not simply “texts.”
Rather, they are part of a universe of devotional activity that also included music and
a multisensory performative, ritual as well as communal, setting. Merely reading li-
turgical poems is comparable to reading the librettos of opera without the music, the
staging, the acting, the gestures, the voice, all of which were part of the Byzantine experi-
ence of chant. With this in mind, let us proceed.
Early Byzantine Hymnic Forms
The realities of the creation and performance of Byzantine hymns before the eighth cen-
tury are clouded in obscurity. Most early Byzantine texts and melodies have been lost to
us since the later liturgical books preserved only a tiny fraction of them. Nevertheless,
both earlier and recent research have retraced what was apparently a vibrant culture
of sacred songs in Christian communities across the empire—see especially Mitsakis
(1986) with Detorakis (1997: 29–45) and recent work on texts preserved in c. 250 early
Byzantine papyrus fragments (Grassien 2011 and “Greek Hymns, Archaeology,” n.d.;
cf. also Mihálykó 2019; we may note here that a remarkable sixth-/seventh-century ex-
ample is preserved on paper [cf. Agati 2017: 80]), the Sinai finds (Géhin and Frøyshov
2000), and Greek hymns and liturgical practices recoverable through their medi-
eval translations (Syriac: Cody 1982, Cassigena-Trévedy 2006, and Tannous 2017;
Georgian: Renoux 2000, and Frøyshov 2003 and 2012).
Naturally for Christian worship, what constituted the core of liturgical prayer was
biblical hymnody: the Psalms of David (McKinnon 1987; Taft 2003) and the fourteen
Canticles, poetic excerpts known as “ᾠδαί = Odes” in Byzantine Greek (Mearns 1914;
Schneider 1949). Indeed, as early as the probably fifth-century Codex Alexandrinus
(London, BL, MS Royal 1 D V–VIII), the Psalms are followed by the Odes in Byzantine
Bible manuscripts, while middle and late Byzantine Psalters regularly include the
first nine Odes (Parpulov 2014: 49 and 57–58; for an example, see Figure 18.1).4 Based
thematically and formally on these hymns, as well as on the Hebrew ritual discourse
from which Greek biblical hymnody itself originated, a new chant was created. As the
Christian church expanded its power over the course of the fourth century and beyond,
its poetry grew quickly in formal experimentation and diversity and was inspired fur-
ther by rhythmical patterns, performative strategies, and rhetorical tropes of contempo-
rary Syriac Christian literature (see Chapter 8, “Translations I: From Other Languages
into Greek,” Ubierna, “Section II. Syriac,” in this volume), as well as contemporary Greek
prose, especially as evident in Christian sermons (Valiavitcharska, “Rhetorical Figures,”
Chapter 12 in this volume).
Some of this new hymnody, all in non-prosodic meters, has survived outside the con-
text of later Byzantine liturgy. Notable cases are Greek hymns misattributed to Ephrem
the Syrian (Lauxtermann 1999: 60–61 and 78–80; Suh 2000; and Hemmerdinger-Iliadou
4 Patmos, Μονὴ τοῦ ἁγίου Ἰωάννου τοῦ Θεολόγου 269; parchment; twelfth century; Psalter with
the nine Odes, with marginal commentary in Catena form (unpublished); f. 71r: Ode 1,8–12 (= Exodus
15:8–12) with commentary. For the first nine Odes, see the Appendix to this chapter; for further hymnic
passages in the New Testament, see Hörandner 2017: 9–10.
Sacred Song 435
Figure 18.1 Patmos, Μονὴ τοῦ ἁγίου Ἰωάννου τοῦ Θεολόγου 269; parchment; twelfth century;
Psalter with the nine Odes, with marginal commentary in catena (unpublished); f. 71r: Ode 1,8–12
(= Exodus 15:8–12) with commentary.
© Patmos, Monastery of St. John Theologian.
1959: col. 804–806 with a list of the metrical texts of the Greek Ephrem; there is a case
of at least one genuine translation from the Syriac, a Sermon on Niniveh and Jonah
[CPG 4082—cf. Zimbardi forthcoming]) and an early Byzantine Resurrection hymn
discovered recently in a manuscript fragment (D’Aiuto 2008, 2019); the latter poem is
“polystrophic,” namely composed of several (in this case, six) stanzas, or “strophes.”
Other early chants have remained in use until today, such as three well-known mono-
strophic hymns. The first is the Φῶς ἱλαρόν, O Gladsome Light (IHEG V:30), already
attested in the fourth century and chanted during Vespers/Hesperinos (Taft 1986: 38 and
286; Jung, “Phos hilaron,” n.d.; see van Haelst 1976: nr. 942 for a sixth-/seventh-century pa-
pyrus testimony). The others are the first two non-biblical chants to enter the celebration
of the Eucharist: the so-called Χερουβικὸς ὕμνος, The Song of the Cherubim (IHEG III:64)
and Ὁ μονογενὴς υἱός, The Only-Begotten Son (IHEG III:111), a hymn attributed to the em-
peror Justinian or to Severos (c. 465–538), patriarch of Antioch in Justinian’s time (Grumel
1923). Here is the text of Φῶς ἱλαρόν:
Φῶς ἱλαρὸν ἁγίας δόξης ἀθανάτου Πατρός,

οὐρανίου, ἁγίου, μάκαρος, Ἰησοῦ Χριστέ,
ἐλθόντες ἐπὶ τὴν ἡλίου δύσιν, ἰδόντες φῶς ἑσπερινόν,
ὑμνοῦμεν Πατέρα, Υἱόν, καὶ ἅγιον Πνεῦμα, Θεόν.
Ἄξιόν σε ἐν πᾶσι καιροῖς ὑμνεῖσθαι φωναῖς αἰσίαις,
Υἱὲ Θεοῦ, ζωὴν ὁ διδούς· διὸ ὁ κόσμος σὲ δοξάζει.
O gladsome light of holy glory, of the immortal Father,

the heavenly, holy, and blessed, O Jesus Christ,
having reached the sun’s setting, having seen the evening light,
we sing and honor God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
It is right for You to be sung and honored at all times in auspicious voices,
O Son of God, You who gave life; thence the world glorifies You.
Also still in use are few of the so-called hymns κατὰ στίχον (“stichic,” arranged by
verse) which seem to have been popular in the early period. Metrically, they are based
on a binary juxtaposition of “colons,” which should be understood here as syntactical
as well as musical units. Here are the first two two-verse colons of one of these hymns
(Maas, Mercati, and Gassisi 1909: 311; IHEG II:7):
Ἡ ἀσώματος φύσις τῶν Χερουβίμ

ἀσιγήτοις σε ὕμνοις δοξολογεῖ·
ἐξαπτέρυγα ζῷα, τὰ Σεραφίμ,
ταῖς ἀπαύστοις φωναῖς σε ὑπερυψοῖ . . .
The incorporeal nature of the Cherubim

glorifies You with songs that are never silenced;
the six-winged creatures, the Seraphim,
exalts You with voices that never cease . . . etc.
Sacred Song 437
Most remarkable for its endurance and influence within as well as outside the Greek
tradition is the so-called Ἀκάθιστος hymn, which has been dated variously and as early
as the fifth century but is most probably later (perhaps sixth or seventh century?) (text
in Trypanis 1968: 29–39; discussion and bibliography in Hörandner 2017: 22–24; see also
Peltomaa 2001 for the early dating; the text, we might add, was translated early on into
Latin, sometime between 750 and 850 [Huglo 1951]5). The Greek title means literally
“without sitting,” namely chanted with everyone standing up. In the Constantinopolitan
cathedral rite, the Akathistos was placed liturgically during Lent and linked with the cel-
ebration of the liberation of Constantinople from the siege by Persians, Avars, and Slavs
in 626 (cf. Typikon of the Great Church II 52–55), while in later monastic typika its place-
ment varies (Velkovska 2000: 161 and 168).
The Akathistos contains twenty-four strophes, where every odd strophe includes a
long list of salutations addressed to the Theotokos, hymnic utterances attested also in
other papyrus hymns. Its first two strophes thus read as follows (IHEG I:18 and 232–233):
(1) Ἄγγελος πρωτοστάτης οὐρανόθεν ἐπέμφθη

εἰπεῖν τῇ θεοτόκῳ τὸ “χαῖρε”·
καὶ σὺν τῇ ἀσωμάτῳ φωνῇ
σωματούμενόν σε θεωρῶν, κύριε,
ἐξίστατο καὶ ἵστατο κραυγάζων πρὸς αὐτὴν τοιαῦτα· (5)
“Χαῖρε, δι’ ἧς ἡ χαρὰ ἐκλάμψει·
χαῖρε, δι’ ἧς ἡ ἀρὰ ἐκλείψει·
χαῖρε, τοῦ πεσόντος Ἀδὰμ ἡ ἀνάκλησις·
χαῖρε, τῶν δακρύων τῆς Εὔας ἡ λύτρωσις·
χαῖρε, ὕψος δυσανάβατον ἀνθρωπίνοις λογισμοῖς· (10)
χαῖρε, βάθος δυσθεώρητον καὶ ἀγγέλων ὀφθαλμοῖς·
χαῖρε, ὅτι ὑπάρχεις βασιλέως καθέδρα·
χαῖρε, ὅτι βαστάζεις τὸν βαστάζοντα πάντα·
χαῖρε, ἀστὴρ ἐμφαίνων τὸν ἥλιον·
χαῖρε, γαστὴρ ἐνθέου σαρκώσεως· (15)
χαῖρε, δι’ ἧς νεουργεῖται ἡ κτίσις·
χαῖρε, δι’ ἧς προσκυνεῖται ὁ πλάστης·
|: χαῖρε, νύμφη ἀνύμφευτε.”:|
(2) Βλέπουσα ἡ ἁγία ἑαυτὴν ἐν ἁγνείᾳ

φησὶ τῷ Γαβριὴλ θαρσαλέως·
“Τὸ παράδοξόν σου τῆς φωνῆς
δυσπαράδεκτόν μου τῇ ψυχῆ φαίνεται·
ἀσπόρου γὰρ συλλήψεως τὴν κύησιν προλέγεις κράζων· (5)
|: «Ἀλληλούϊα».”:|
5
For other early Byzantine Greek hymnody in Latin, see Wanek (2013); cf. also http://www.gruene-
eule.at/index.html.
An angel of the first rank was sent from heaven

to say to the Theotokos: “Hail!”;
with his incorporeal voice,
as he witnessed You, O Lord, become embodied,
excited he stood, crying out loud to her such words: (5)
“Hail, through whom joy shall shine forth;
Hail, through whom the curse shall disappear;
Hail, recall of Adam who had fallen;
Hail, redemption of Eve’s tears;
Hail, height that human thought can hardly ascend; (10)
Hail, depth that angels’ eyes can hardly gaze;
Hail, since you are the throne of the King;
Hail, since you hold Him who holds everything;
Hail, star showing the Sun;
Hail, womb of God’s incarnation; (15)
Hail, through whom creation is renewed;
Hail, through whom the Maker can be venerated;
|: Hail, O bride unwedded.”:|
(2) Seeing that she is pure, the holy woman

says to Gabriel boldly:
“Your strange words
seem impossible for my soul to accept;
it is a conception without insemination that you foretell,
as you utter in loud voice:
|: ‘Hallelujah!’ ”:|
Troparion
From these early hymnic forms, different in length and metrical (i.e., musical) com-
plexity, and a few more not surveyed here (the best recent review in Grassien 2011), a
basic type of hymn was to emerge and prevail as the principal unit for the composition
of later Byzantine hymnody: the τροπάριον.6 The troparion is a relatively short mono-
strophic chant, like the Φῶς ἱλαρὸν cited earlier. It was written in free rhythmic prose,
a concatenation of a series of colons, and short phrases that usually corresponded with
relatively autonomous syntactical units that avoided what is called “enjambment” (the
continuation of a phrase without a pause beyond the end of a colon).
For us, “prose” is the key word in the preceding definition as, at first glance, the
troparion does not look like traditional Greek poetry, whose core unit by the fourth cen-
tury was the verse. Byzantine manuscripts (and printed liturgical books) perpetuate this
6 In what follows, Greek technical terms are simply transliterated, and placed in the plural when
necessary.
Sacred Song 439
impression as they copy troparia as unmetrical prose. In the manuscripts, punctuation

marks (usually a raised dot) indicate the end of all colons and are more frequent than the
punctuation marks used for the copying of prose texts, but there is no other visual ele-
ment that suggests poetry.
Yet for the Byzantines, the key word in our definition would be “chant.” As its name
suggests, the troparion constituted the lyrics for a melody—which is how one would
translate τροπάριον literally, a notion reflected in the medieval Latin translation
“modulatio” (Sophocles 1914: 1096). It was precisely this melody which defined the
length of the poem, regulated the position of its main accents, and in essence produced
its rhythm. And it was the melody to which early Byzantine papyri occasionally
(Grassien 2011: 369–374), and later liturgical manuscripts consistently (cf., e.g., Figure
18.2 later in this chapter), alerted the reader, most importantly by indicating the mu-
sical scale in which the hymn was to be sung. This scale was one of the eight “ἦχοι,” in
the system of eight “modes” of Byzantine as well as Syrian, Armenian, Georgian, me-
dieval Latin, and Slavonic chant—the musical ὀκτώηχος, which corresponded to an
eight-week cyclical arrangement of the liturgical year and is attested since at least the
sixth century (Troelsgård 2011: 22 and 60), though the evidence becomes substantial
only after the eighth century (see further Alygizakis 1985; on the liturgical Oktoêchos, see
Frøyshov 2007 with Jeffery 2001).
We might rightly assume that the melodies of the early Byzantine troparia were rel-
atively simple, without intricate elaboration and following a finite set of melodic
movements and formulas appropriate to each ἦχος. Simplicity and formulaic structures
were necessitated by function: these hymns were chanted not only by professional
chanters, soloists or choirs, but often also by the congregation. However this might
be, they were transmitted from generation to generation primarily (if not exclusively)
orally—melodies of early Byzantine troparia are in fact recorded several centuries later
in musical notation (the Φῶς ἱλαρὸν, for instance, is first notated musically in post-
Byzantine manuscripts). Such oral transmission served well the devotional needs of
generations of faithful, but naturally limits our ability to reconstruct early Byzantine
sacred songs.
As Byzantine church ritual became more and more elaborate, with new feast days
added to its calendar (for the liturgical year, see Velkovska 2000), it invited more cre-
ativity in terms of prayers, music, and, of course, hymns. Middle and late Byzantine
liturgical manuscripts contain thousands of different individual troparia. These
carry numerous designations, pertaining to their position within a service, their con-
tent, their origin, and so on (such as κάθισμα = sessional, ἀπολυτίκιον = dismissal,
θεοτοκίον = dedicated to the Theotokos, ἀνατολικόν = eastern, etc.).
Designations in reference to melody are important for us here. A troparion may be
ἰδιόμελον, namely with its own unique melody and thus rhythmical pattern, chanted
usually once a year. The most common type of idiomela are the so-called στιχηρά
(to which we shall return later), of which the most famous is certainly the Κύριε, ἡ ἐν
πολλαῖς ἁμαρτίαις (Lord, the Woman of Many Sins; IHEG II:305) composed by Kassia,
a remarkable early ninth-century female hymnographer (one of the very few Byzantine
women writers) (PmbZ 3636–3637; Rochow 1967; Maltese 1991 and 2001; cf. Figure 19.2
in Chapter 19 of this volume). Another type is the αὐτόμελον troparion with its own me-
lodic and rhythmical structure that simultaneously served as model, a familiar tune we
might say, for other troparia. The latter are called προσόμοια, contrafacta, sung and pat-
terned after the automela (for such prosomoia e.g. for the Lenten period, see Husmann
1972 and Schidlovsky 1983).
Prosomoia Troparia
How were the prosomoia troparia composed? Musically, they followed the same melody
as the automelon. Rhythmically, they also replicated the automelon by following the
principles already mentioned: colon structure, homotony, and isosyllaby (Lauxtermann
1999: 69–86). Namely, each new contrafactum replicated:
(a) the colon arrangement;

(b) the position of the main accents within each colon (homotony);
(c) the same number of syllables of the automelon (isosyllaby).
The following is an example. The automelon is cited first—in this case a stichêron
sung in the first mode (ἦχος α’) for the Vespers of the feast of the Virgin’s Dormition,
celebrated on August 15 (IHEG V:233)—and is followed by the prosomoion—another
Vespers stichêron in the same mode for the Vespers of the feast of the Presentation of
the Virgin, celebrated on November 21 (IHEG IΙΙ:493); it should be noted that in the
manuscripts the automela would be regularly preceded by the indication of the mode
(and possibly the term αὐτόμελον), while prosomoia would be also prefaced by the be-
ginning words of the model hymn (in our case: ὢ τοῦ παραδόξου—cf., e.g., London, BL
Add MS 24378, a fourteenth-century Mênaion of the first six months of the Byzantine
calendar, September through February, f. 147r):
Automelon:
Ὢ τοῦ παραδόξου θαύματος!

῾Η πηγὴ τῆς ζωῆς, ἐν μνημείῳ τίθεται,
καὶ κλίμαξ πρὸς οὐρανόν, ὁ τάφος γίνεται.
Εὐφραίνου Γεθσημανῆ, τῆς Θεοτόκου τὸ ἅγιον τέμενος.
Βοήσωμεν οἱ πιστοί, τὸν Γαβριὴλ κεκτημένοι ταξίαρχον:
“Κεχαριτωμένη χαῖρε, μετὰ σοῦ ὁ Κύριος,
ὁ παρέχων τῷ κόσμῳ διὰ σοῦ τὸ μέγα ἔλεος.”
Sacred Song 441
Prosomoion:
Σήμερον πιστοὶ χορεύσωμεν,

ἐν ψαλμοῖς καὶ ὕμνοις, τῷ Κυρίῳ ἄδοντες,
τιμῶντες καὶ τὴν αὐτοῦ, ἡγιασμένην σκηνήν,
τὴν ἔμψυχον κιβωτόν, τὴν τὸν ἀχώρητον Λόγον χωρήσασαν·
προσφέρεται γὰρ Θεῷ, ὑπερφυῶς τῇ σαρκὶ νηπιάζουσα,
καὶ ἀρχιερεὺς ὁ μέγας, Ζαχαρίας δέχεται,
εὐφραινόμενος ταύτην, ὡς Θεοῦ κατοικητήριον.
What a strange miracle!

The fountain of life, is placed in a memorial tomb,
and the tomb becomes a ladder to heaven.
Rejoice Gethsemane, the holy shrine of the Theotokos.
Let us, faithful, shout, having Gabriel as our leader:
“Hail you full of grace, the Lord is with you,
the one who through you provides great mercy to the world.
Today, faithful, let us dance,

in psalms and hymns, singing to the Lord,
and honoring also His holy tabernacle,
the living arc, who contained the uncontainable Word;
for she is being presented to God in a supernatural fashion,
being still an infant with respect to her body,
and the great Archpriest, Zachariah receives her,
delighted, as she is a dwelling of God.
The second troparion replicates the number of colons, as well as the accentual and
syllabic pattern and, thus, the melody of the model troparion. Or, to be more precise,
the second hymn follows closely the first, but the two are not identical in their form. For
instance, the third colon, “καὶ κλίμαξ πρὸς οὐρανόν, ὁ τάφος γίνεται,” is not reproduced
exactly in the prosomoion that reads: “τιμῶντες καὶ τὴν αὐτοῦ, ἡγιασμένην σκηνήν”; the
former has thirteen syllables, while the latter fourteen; and while the former ends with
an accent on the antepenult, the latter has an accent on the last syllable. How are we
to explain such a minor discrepancy, a “fault” which is indeed the norm in Byzantine
prosomoia? The answer lies in the flexibility afforded by the performance of hymns.
With some small modulation, the chanter could easily adapt the “ἡγιασμένην σκηνήν”
to the melody required by “ὁ τάφος γίνεται.”7
7
There are other interesting features to this specific example that are not discussed here, such as the
consistent use of a proparoxytone ending in each colon, the most characteristic cadence in Byzantine
prose rhythm.
Polystrophic Hymns
Using a limited set of familiar melodies and producing prosomoia, which com-
prise the majority of surviving monostrophic hymns, was only one way of expanding
the hymnographic corpus. The other was to turn troparia into stanzas of a longer
polystrophic hymn and thus create more complex structures.
We have already encountered two polystrophic hymns, the Resurrection hymn and
the Akathistos, yet these are, according to our available evidence, unique in the way
they combine different troparia/strophes. Two other types, which seem to come into
being around the same time—as early as the fifth century—were to dominate Byzantine
hymnographic production: the κοντάκιον and the κανών. We shall look at each type
closely in the following, but the basic principles of their composition are the same
as those of prosomoia. Each cluster of strophes is patterned by the same melody and
rhythm; the first stanza within a series functions as the model tune/text (later called
εἱρμός), while the stanzas that follow are produced as contrafacta—with ample space for
small deviations that are very frequent also in polystrophic hymns.
Two further elements defined the morphology of polystrophic hymns from early
Byzantium onward. The first is the presence of an ἀκροστιχίς, an acrostic that usually
linked the first letter of each strophe, forming either the letters of the alphabet (as is
the case of the Akathistos), or, more frequently, a short phrase, which may contain the
name of the hymn’s composer/poet. The acrostic is regularly cited at the beginning of
a polystrophic hymn in manuscripts, while the first letters of strophes may be visually
distinct, written in red (as opposed to brown) ink. In some rare cases, the acrostic may
be formed by the first syllable or even first word of strophes. Also, rarely the acrostic may
link colons from each strophe (as is in the case of the Resurrection hymn that displays
an alphabetic acrostic) or the beginning letters of each verse (as in the case of the iambic
kanones, attributed to Ioannes Damaskenos, on which see later discussion).8
The second feature is the refrain (ἀνακλώμενον or ἐφύμνιον in Greek), namely the
repetition of the same word or phrase at the end of each strophe, often a biblical phrase
or some locution inspired by biblical discourse—such as the “Hallelujah” or the “Hail,
O bride unwedded” in the Akathistos.9 The refrain preserves the echoes of the origins
of Christian sacred song, which in its purest and earliest forms consisted of the repeti-
tion of short concluding phrases from the Psalms or the Odes—a practice that persisted
in certain contexts (Strunk 1977: 112–150; Hanke 2002). These short verses, often
embellished with simple melodies, could be chanted by the entire congregation.
8 It should be noted that alphabetic acrostics or “abecedaries” are an ancient device (found for instance
in the Hebrew Old Testament) and became very popular in medieval hymnody and other types of poetry
across many languages. They were used also in the context of occult discourse and may have functioned
as a mnemonic technique. Many abecedary poems in accentual meters are known from Byzantium (such
as the so-called catanyctic alphabets; Lauxtermann 1999: 31–35), though such poems are comparatively
less present in Greek hymnography proper. For acrostic hymns in the Slavonic tradition with useful
bibliography, see Marti (1997). For an early Byzantine acrostic hymn, see Łajtar (2014).
9 This famous hymn notably employs two refrains, which is an unusual device.
Sacred Song 443
Kontakion
Of the early Byzantine polystrophic hymns that apparently had come to existence by
the fifth century, the kontakion (κοντάκιον/κονδάκιον) was to reach its peak first. Its
form developed under the influence of contemporary metrical sermons, subject to mu-
sical setting, written in Syriac (especially by Ephrem the Syrian [c. 306–373]; cf. Petersen
1985; Brock 1989, 2008). The relevant genres are the maḏrāšā (instruction), a strophic
sung hymn with isosyllaby, refrain, and often acrostic; the soghitha, a subcategory of
the maḏrāšā, often in dramatic dialogue form and with an acrostic; and the mēmrā (dis-
course), a recited verse homily in isosyllabic couplets. Notably, none of these forms
displays homotony, which is a typical feature in Greek chant.10
By the sixth century, the kontakion seems to have become a standard feature of the
Constantinopolitan rite—whose performative potential was maximized by the con-
struction of a new impressive liturgical space, Justinian’s Hagia Sophia. From the per-
spective of later Byzantine tradition, this was the time of the most important poet of
kontakia: Romanos Melodos (c. 485–after 555). Fifty-nine compositions are securely
attributed to him (according to the edition of Maas and Trypanis 1963), some 13,000
lines of poetry, inspiring much later homiletics and hymnody (Cunningham 2008),
including many new kontakia which were often falsely, though in my view intention-
ally, attributed to him.11 Kontakia, often in a shorter, truncated form of fewer strophes,
were composed until the tenth century12; these include the several compositions under
the pseudonym of Romanos and many more that followed metrically his hymns. After
the year 1000 or so, new kontakia continued to be regularly composed, but their over-
whelming majority consisted only of a prelude and one oikos (a development to which
we will return later; see Figure 18.213).
A typical kontakion by Romanos normally contained eighteen to twenty-four
strophes, termed οἶκοι (lit. “houses”; from the Syriac baithó?), all of which followed
the melodic/rhythmical pattern of the first strophe, the εἱρμός. The strophes, that is,
replicated the heirmos’ number of colons and, within each colon, the number of syllables
and position of the main accents; they were also linked by an acrostic. Additionally,
within each oikos, colons may be rhythmically identical, creating further patterns of
correspondence and repetition. Finally, one more troparion, the prelude (προοίμιον or
10
To the three Syriac genres, we may add another late antique stanzaic hymn from the contemporary
Hebrew hymnography, the piyyut; see Münz-Manor (2010).
11 Romanos’s dubia are collected in Maas and Trypanis (1970); for Romanos, see also Papaioannou,
“Authors,” Chapter 20 in this volume.

12 A recent estimate suggests that about 740 kontakia have been preserved (Arentzen and Krueger
2016: 2); for an edition of many of them, see Pitra (1876: 242–661).
13 Patmos 212 (cf. next note), f. 86r: anonymously transmitted kontakia—the end of a twelve-stanza
kontakion on Saint Andrew (with the acrostic: “τοῦ ἁμαρτωλοῦ”) and the truncated kontakia (prelude
and oikos) for December 1 and 2 on Prophets Nahum and Habakkuk (these are edited in Naoumides
1954: πη´-πθ´).
Figure 18.2 Patmos, Μονὴ τοῦ ἁγίου Ἰωάννου τοῦ Θεολόγου 212; parchment; tenth century
(2/2); Kontakarion; f. 86r: anonymously transmitted kontakia.
Sacred Song 445
κουκούλιον) prefaced the poem, and we sometimes encounter two or three preludes.
The prelude displays an independent metrical and musical structure, but is linked
with the rest of the kontakion through the refrain (for these features, see Grosdidier de
Matons 1977: 119–156; Hannick 1984).
The first three troparia, namely the prooimion and the first two oikoi (IHEG II:58–
60, IV:63, and III:134) of Romanos’s most popular Byzantine hymn, dedicated to the
Nativity of Christ, can serve as an example for the metrical patterns of kontakia in ge-
neral (text from Grosdidier de Matons 1965: kontakion 10; English translation from Lash
1995: 3–12):
Μηνὶ δεκεμβρίῳ κεʹ, κοντάκιον τῆς Χριστοῦ γεννήσεως, ἦχος γʹ, φέρον
ἀκροστιχίδα·
τοῦ ταπεινοῦ Ῥωμανοῦ ὕμνος (acrostic)
Προοίμιον (prelude)
Ἡ παρθένος σήμερον τὸν ὑπερούσιον τίκτει,
καὶ ἡ γῆ τὸ σπήλαιον τῷ ἀπροσίτῳ προσάγει·
ἄγγελοι μετὰ ποιμένων δοξολογοῦσι,
μάγοι δὲ μετὰ ἀστέρος ὁδοιποροῦσι·
δι’ ἡμᾶς γὰρ ἐγεννήθη (5)
|: παιδίον νέον, ὁ πρὸ αἰώνων Θεός.:| (refrain)
(1) Τὴν Ἐδὲμ Βηθλεὲμ ἤνοιξε, δεῦτε ἴδωμεν· (first oikos and heirmos
for the rest of the poem)
τὴν τρυφὴν ἐν κρυφῇ ηὕραμεν, δεῦτε λάβωμεν
τὰ τοῦ παραδείσου ἐντὸς τοῦ σπηλαίου·
ἐκεῖ ἐφάνη ῥίζα ἀπότιστος βλαστάνουσα ἄφεσιν,
ἐκεῖ ηὑρέθη φρέαρ ἀνόρυκτον, (5)
οὗ πιεῖν Δαυὶδ πρὶν ἐπεθύμησεν·
ἐκεῖ παρθένος τεκοῦσα βρέφος
τὴν δίψαν ἔπαυσεν εὐθὺς τὴν τοῦ Ἀδὰμ καὶ τοῦ Δαυίδ·
διὰ τοῦτο πρὸς τοῦτο ἐπειχθῶμεν ποῦ ἐτέχθη
|: παιδίον νέον, ὁ πρὸ αἰώνων Θεός.:| (10) (refrain)
(2) Ὁ πατὴρ τῆς μητρὸς γνώμῃ υἱὸς ἐγένετο, (second oikos)

ὁ σωτὴρ τῶν βρεφῶν βρέφος ἐν φάτνῃ ἔκειτο·
ὃν κατανοοῦσα φησὶν ἡ τεκοῦσα·
«Εἰπέ μοι, τέκνον, πῶς ἐνεσπάρης μοι ἢ πῶς ἐνεφύης μοι·
ὁρῶ σε, σπλάγχνον, καὶ καταπλήττομαι, (5)
ὅτι γαλουχῶ καὶ οὐ νενύμφευμαι·
καὶ σὲ μὲν βλέπω μετὰ σπαργάνων,
τὴν παρθενίαν δὲ ἀκμὴν ἐσφραγισμένην θεωρῶ·
σὺ γὰρ ταύτην φυλάξας ἐγεννήθης εὐδοκήσας
|: παιδίον νέον, ὁ πρὸ αἰώνων Θεός».:| (10) (refrain)
Month of December, 25, Kontakion of Christ’s Nativity, Third Mode, with the
following acrostic:
Hymn by the humble Romanos
Prelude
Today the Virgin gives birth to him who is above all being,
and the earth offers a cave to him whom no one can approach.
Angels with shepherds give glory,
and magi journey with a star,
for to us there has been born
|: a little Child, God before the ages.:|
(1) Bethlehem has opened Eden, come, let us see;

we have found delight in secret, come, let us receive
the joys of Paradise within the cave.
There the unwatered root whose blossom is forgiveness has appeared.
There has been found the undug well
from which David once longed to drink.
There a virgin has borne a babe
and has quenched at once Adam’s and David’s thirst.
For this, let us hasten to this place where there has been born
(2) The mother’s Father has willingly become her Son,

the infants’ savior is laid as an infant in a manger.
As she who bore him contemplates him, she says,
“Tell me, my Child, how were you sown, or how were you planted in me?
I see you, my flesh and blood, and I am amazed,
because I give suck and yet I am not married.
And though I see you in swaddling clothes,
I know that the flower of my virginity is sealed,
for you preserved it when, in your good pleasure, you were born
We know virtually nothing about the original melody of this and similar early
Byzantine kontakia and frustratingly little about the method and ritual setting of their
performance; the urban lay night vigil was certainly one of the contexts (Koder 2003;
Frank 2006). The earliest manuscripts that contain collections of kontakia in musical
notation, the so-called Psaltika for the use of the soloist (ψάλτης; Troelsgård 2011: 85–
86), date to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and derive mainly from southern Italian
monasteries of the Studite tradition (Floros 1960; Thodberg 1960; see Raasted 1989 for
Romanos’s Nativity kontakion specifically); five more or less contemporary Slavonic
Kontakars contain kontakia with musical notation in the so-called Asmatikon tradition,
which preserve the repertory of Byzantine choral chant (Floros 2011). Both the Psaltikon
and the Asmatikon-Kontakars are thought to record earlier (tenth-, eleventh-century?)
Sacred Song 447
melodies and to reflect the musical performance of kontakia in the Constantinopolitan

cathedral rite (Lingas 1995 and 1996: 57–61).
These melodies apparently have little to do with the original simple tunes in which
Romanos’s and other kontakia were sung (cf. Raasted 2001), since the Psaltikon and
Asmatikon represent the beginning of a florid, elaborate tradition of chanting in the
history of Byzantine music (cf. Martani, “Recitation and Chant,” Chapter 19 in this
volume). Nevertheless, these liturgical books are also representative of what happened
to the kontakion by the eleventh century: they set into music only the prelude and the
first oikos of the kontakion and thus preserve an abbreviated version of the hymn. Other
contemporary liturgical books without musical notation (which are, after all, the ma-
jority) contain only the first two troparia of earlier kontakia and position them in the
middle of the Matins (the Ὄρθρος). Finally, as already mentioned, new compositions of
kontakia, took the new, abbreviated form.14
This gradual shortening of the kontakion has been usually interpreted as the decline of
this early Byzantine hymnic form, which was superseded by the new polystrophic genre,
the κανών (to be discussed later). However, we may rather regard the transformation of
the kontakion during the middle Byzantine period as a process of monumentalization
by which the kontakion grew—rather than diminished—in stature. In my view, what the
evidence suggests is that this type of hymn, which by the tenth century was identified
with Romanos, the συγγραφεύς τῶν κοντακίων around whom a significant cult grew
in Constantinople, became the centerpiece for the display of musical virtuosity during
the Morning Service and/or vigils. At that, the kontakion became the first and, for some
time (with few exceptions), the only type of non-biblical hymn to enjoy such ornate mu-
sical elaboration—the florid style of the Psaltikon and the Asmatikon focused otherwise
in the melismatic embellishment of the Psalter.
That hymnographers stopped writing Romanos-like kontakia after the end of the
tenth century is thus not the symptom of a genre that has exhausted its life span. Shifts
in taste and ideology of liturgical discourse promoted the composition of other kinds of
hymnography, such as the more rhetorical kanôn. Yet the cessation of production and
simultaneous transformation of the kontakion are another matter. These changes were
the result of great reverence for a hymn and a hymnode that had by then become inimi-
table classics. In a “post-classical” world, composition gave way to performance.
14 Though they do not alter the general picture, exceptions do exist with respect to all aspects
described previously. Namely: (a) some of the original, simple and syllabic, melodies of the kontakia may
be preserved in a few post-thirteenth-century musical manuscripts that treat the kontakion as another
monostrophic hymn; see Levy (1961) and Raasted (1989); (b) a relatively small number of kontakaria
manuscripts contain fuller versions of kontakia—the earliest and most important is the two-volume
Patmos parchment kontakarion (Patmos 212 and 213; Figure 18.2 in this chapter), dating to the second
half of the tenth century, with 379 compositions (Naoumides 1954; Arentzen and Krueger 2016); and
(c) some post-1000 kontakia contain several strophes; see Gassisi (1906) with kontakia from eleventh-
century Grottaferrata.
Stichêra
But we have gone too far into the history of later sacred songs. Let us return to the for-
mative first centuries, the period from the fourth into the early ninth century. In terms
of its content, the early Byzantine kontakion was essentially a sermon in verse. Its pri-
mary function was to explicate and, through dialogical exchanges, re-perform impor-
tant events originally recounted in the Old and, especially, the New Testament. In other
words, the early kontakion was a form of exegesis comparable with much contempo-
rary homiletic literature. Like sermons, it was consequently linked closely with the bib-
lical narrative, whose reading it was meant to accompany and illustrate during liturgical
services.
Other early Byzantine hymnography was not attached to the narrative readings from
the Gospels or the Old Testament, but rather accompanied biblical hymnodic literature,
namely the Psalms and the Odes. The hymn known later as the kanôn came into ex-
istence in relation to the Odes, while in relation to the Psalms, the so-called stichêra
troparia were created. Both types were in existence by the sixth century (Frøyshov
2000) and thus came about more or less at the same time as the kontakion.
The stichêra (στιχηρά), examples of which were presented earlier in the section on
prosomoia, were groups of troparia, i.e. monostrophic hymns, each following a Psalmic
verse (στίχος). Originally, it seems that the stichêra were subordinate to the Psalms and
were probably very short in form—perhaps they comprised simply a short phrase that
responded or commented on the Psalmic verse and were thus, in essence, slightly more
elaborate refrains. However this might be, in its mature form, the one we can trace from
the eighth century onward, the stichêron was a typical troparion, with a melodic and
metrical structure that was either unique (stichêron idiomelon), chanted once a year, or
that followed an earlier model (stichêron prosomoion).
Such stichêra found a standard place in the evening and morning services, toward the
beginning of the Vespers/Hesperinos and toward the end of the Matins/Orthros. Usually,
they were grouped together in sequences of four or more troparia, concluded by another
troparion called doxastikon.15 Though aligned in this way, the stichêra did not become a
fully developed polystrophic hymn like the kontakion or the kanôn.16 Nevertheless, like
the early kontakia and the later (as we shall see) kanones, the melodies of stichêra were
originally and, for most of the Byzantine period, relatively simple. Notation before the
fourteenth century tended to be “syllabic” (approximately one note per syllable) rather
15
This usually longer hymn is introduced with the ancient formula “Δόξα Πατρὶ καὶ Υἱῷ καὶ Ἁγίῳ
Πνεύματι· καὶ νῦν καὶ ἀεί καὶ εἰς τοὺς αἰώνας τῶν αἰώνων, ἀμήν [Glory to the Father, and the Son, and
the Holy Spirit; both now and forever and unto the ages of ages, amen]”; occasionally the introductory
phrase is split in half, and a second (also usually long) hymn follows the “καὶ νῦν καὶ ἀεί . . ..”
16 There are, however, exceptions to this, such as the twenty-four Aposticha (a type of stichêra)
troparia, joined by an alphabetical acrostic, attributed to Ioannes Damaskenos; these are chanted in
groups of three in eight consecutive Great Vespers of Sundays included in the Oktoêchos, while each
group is followed by a Theotokion whose first letters spell out the name Ἰωάννης (cf. Guillaume 1977: 6).
Sacred Song 449
than “melismatic” (many notes per syllable). This is attested by the surviving Stichêraria,
musical books which date from the tenth century onward (e.g., the Athos, Lavra Γ 67
mentioned earlier), and which collect stichêra idiomela (see Wolfram, “Stichērarion”;
for an example with “Middle Byzantine” notation, see the thirteenth-century British
Library, Add MS 27865; cf. also Figure 19.2 in Chapter 19 of this volume).
Kanôn
While stichêra (cor-)respond to the Psalms, the kanôn (κανών) is connected with the nine
biblical Odes (on which see the Appendix to this chapter). The kanôn, at least in some
shorter form, seems to be as ancient as the kontakion and the stichêra (Petrynko 2010: 21–
50, esp. 40–48; Nikiforova 2012: 17–93 and 2013: 173–178; Frøyshov, “Greek Hymnody”
and “Byzantine Rite,” n.d.; cf. also Kujumdzieva 2018). Moreover, the evidence points to
Palestinian origins, most probably in the context of the Jerusalemite rite, what middle
Byzantine sources refer to as the Ἁγιοπολίτης, “the tradition of the Holy City.”
During the eighth century, an impressive and most influential corpus of kanôn poetry
was created by four masters of the genre:
• Germanos (c. 655–c. 732; PmbZ 2298), a eunuch, first enrolled in the clergy of Hagia
Sophia, then bishop of Kyzikos, and later patriarch of Constantinople (715–730);
• Andreas (c. 660–740), born in Damascus, enrolled in the clergy of the patriarchate
in Jerusalem, and then with a career in the church of Constantinople (685–711) and
in Crete (archbishop: 711–730; PmbZ 362);
• Ioannes Damaskenos (c. 675–c. 745), who became secretary to the caliph of
Damascus and then (sometime between 705 and 726) a priest at the church of the
Anastasis (Resurrection) in Jerusalem (PmbZ 2969; Petrynko 2010: 51–84);
and
• Kosmas Melodos, bishop of Maiuma (near Gaza in Palestine, c. 675–c. 752/754;
PmbZ 4089).
After Germanos, Andreas, Damaskenos, and Kosmas, the kanôn became the length-
iest and, liturgically, the most conspicuous hymnographic genre, occupying a large
part of the Matins of every feast. It is no surprise that the biggest number of surviving
(published or unpublished) troparia belong to various kanones—a few thousands alone
are by the most prolific poet in this genre, Ioseph Hymnographos (c. 812/818–c. 886), a
Sicilian with a monastic and ecclesiastical career in Constantinople (from 867, Ioseph
was skeuophylax of Hagia Sophia; PmbZ 23510 and Toma 2016).
As with the kontakion, namely the other polystrophic hymn, isosyllaby and homotony
were constitutive elements of the kanôn (Grosdidier de Matons 1980/1981). The kanôn
differed, however, insofar as it did not follow a single melody. Rather, it consisted of orig-
inally nine and eventually eight groups of troparia, with each group following a distinct
melodic/metrical structure (Wellesz 1962: 198–239).17 In the classical form of the kanôn,
these groups typically consisted of four troparia, the last of which was usually dedicated
to the Theotokos and was, accordingly, termed “θεοτοκίον” (often indicated simply with
a “θ” in the manuscripts).18
The groups of troparia are termed “odes” (ᾠδαί), since they originally complemented
and eventually replaced (Harris 2004 with Troelsgård 2003) the relevant biblical Odes.
The theme of the latter is often reflected in the odes of the kanôn, especially in the refrains
of individual troparia. For instance, the seventh and eighth odes resonate the prayer and
song of the Three Holy Children in the Furnace (Daniel 3:26–88: Εὐλογητὸς εἶ, κύριε
[ . . . ] and εὐλογεῖτε, πάντα τὰ ἔργα τοῦ κυρίου, etc.), while the ninth ode invokes the
Ode of the Theotokos from the Gospel of Luke (the Magnificat in Lk 1:46–55: Μεγαλύνει
ἡ ψυχή μου τὸν κύριον, etc.).
As in the kontakion, all the troparia of the kanôn were frequently connected by an
acrostic. This usually preserves the name of the poet of the hymn, is normally cited
also at the beginning of the kanôn in the manuscripts, and is very often in verse, usu-
ally in Byzantine twelve syllable—this occurs especially in the hymns of Ioseph
Hymnographos (Weyh 1908). The pattern for each ode of a kanôn was provided, in
original compositions, by its first stanza or, as in the majority of kanones after the ninth
century, an heirmos taken from an earlier model kanôn; in this case, the heirmos was
indicated in an abbreviated form at the beginning of each ode.19
Around forty manuscripts with anthologies of the most important heirmoi annotated
with musical notation survive from the tenth to the fifteenth century. These so-called
Heirmologia contain anywhere from 800 to 3,200 heirmoi; the larger number pertains
to earlier manuscripts, while the smaller to the later ones, since a process of abridging
the collection by focusing on the most common heirmoi occurred over the course of
the centuries (Velimirović, “Heirmologion”; Harris 2004; Papathanasiou 2008)—for
examples with the “Palaeobyzantine” notation, see the eleventh-century Paris, BNF,
Coislin 220 (available online) and the twelfth-century Patmos 54 (Figure 18.3 in this
chapter with Komines 1988: 133–14020). The melodies recorded in these anthologies are
again rather simple (Martani 2008; Makris 2008), with a noticeably formulaic character.
17 After the eighth century, the second group of troparia, namely the second Ode, was gradually
omitted (a process completed over the course of the middle Byzantine period; see Kollyropoulou 2012),
with the exception of kanones chanted during the period of Lent; these latter kanones (often consisting
of fewer groups of odes anyhow) were essentially remnants of earlier types of kanôn-writing attested
primarily in Georgian (cf. Nikiforova 2013: 174–176; cf. also Chapter 22, “Translations II: Greek Texts into
Other Languages,” Aleksidze, “Section V. Georgian” in this volume).
18 The example of Romanos’s Nativity kontakion cited earlier may serve as an example for the
structure for an ode of a kanôn, minus the presence of a proem.

19 A relatively comprehensive list of such heirmoi that have been published can be found in
Eustratiades 1932, though this work should be used with caution as far as the attributions of heirmoi are
concerned; see Frøyshov, “Byzantine Rite,” n.d.
20 F. 94v: the end of heirmoi for the third mode and the beginning of the fourth mode (prefaced
by an epigram on the mode in twelve-syllable verse), where the first text bears the title (in red ink)
“ἀκο(λουθία) ἀνα(στάσιμος) Ἰω(άννου) (μον)αχ(οῦ) α´ ἦχ(ος) δ´.”
Sacred Song 451
Figure 18.3 Patmos, Μονὴ τοῦ ἁγίου Ἰωάννου τοῦ Θεολόγου 54; parchment; twelfth century;
Heirmologion; f. 94v: heirmoi for the third and fourth mode.
This may be the result of a hymnographic genre which, like the stichêra, required com-
prehension on the part of its audience and thus the content of the hymn seems to have
usually taken precedence over its musical elaboration.
Though simplicity was the norm melodically, the kanôn was not immune to rhetor-
ical elaboration and, occasionally, the display of high learnedness. From all types of
Byzantine hymnography, it is in the kanôn that we encounter some exceptional cases of
joining archaizing meters with chant. The earliest and most famous examples are three
kanones on the feasts of Christmas, Theophany, and the Pentecost, attributed to Ioannes
Damaskenos. These kanones made use of the iambic trimeter and employed all sorts
of rhetorical figures and unusual diction (Christ and Paranikas 1871: 205–217; Nauck
1894; Lauxtermann 2003: 135–136; Afentoulidou 2004; new edition of the three hymns
and discussion in Skrekas 2008; new edition and commentary of the Christmas kanôn
in Petrynko 2010). Already from the ninth century, these kanones were very popular in
Byzantium, becoming the object of imitation as well as school study.
The Challenges II
From a certain perspective, hymnographical creativity seems to have reached its peak by
the end of the ninth century. At that time, the main genres of sacred song as described
earlier had been established, and a sufficient body of texts as well as melodies had appeared
which acquired the status of a hymnographical norm. The usual narratives of Byzantine
hymnography thus end with the growth of the kanôn during iconoclasm and its imme-
diate aftermath. What followed in later centuries gives the impression, at first glance, of
mere preservation of old hymnography and, when it came to composition, mere imita-
tion. New troparia, kontakia, and kanones were written; yet they were based on the met-
rical/melodic patterns of earlier hymns. These were, that is, the centuries of prosomoia.
Nevertheless, much innovation and development lie behind these centuries as well.
Though significant work has been done also on this period of hymnography, the current
state of our research does not yet allow a comprehensive overview. Unable to survey the
history of sacred song as well as, more generally, liturgical literature in Byzantium from
c. 900 to 1453 and beyond, we shall conclude as we began, with a list of challenges, and
thus identify certain areas of creativity which require further study:
• The creation and standardization of liturgical books, which went hand in hand with
developments in Byzantine ritual from the tenth century onward;21
21
For brief overviews see: Levy and Conomos, “Liturgy and Liturgical Books IV. Byzantine Rite”
(n.d.); Unterburger 1994; Velkovska (1997); Nin (1997); Follieri (2002); Taft (2004); D’Aiuto (2006);
cf. also Spanos (2010: 5–13) for the liturgical context; for the history of the Mênaion specifically, see
Nikiforova (2012) with Krivko (2011–2012). Sergij (1875–1901) and Dmitrievskij (1895–1917) remain
fundamental for the history of the Byzantine liturgical calendar and certain liturgical books.
Sacred Song 453
• The incorporation of metrical calendars in hexameter and twelve-syllable verse

within liturgical books (notably, of all types of learned Byzantine versification in
non-hymnographic meters, these calendars reached the widest circulation);22
• The spectacular growth of musical elaboration and composition, especially in the
late Byzantine period;23
• The appearance, also in the late Byzantine period, of a significant body of hymnog-
raphy in fifteen-syllable verse (collected in Stathis 1977);
• The continued existence of regional traditions;24
• The influence of hymnography on other genres;25
• The impact of hymnography on the visual arts, both on a large/public and on a
small/private scale (especially in the late Byzantine period), and thus the trans-
lation as well as transmission of the tropes and themes of sacred songs by visual
means;26
• The use of hymnographical forms outside liturgical contexts (for teaching purposes
or for parody)27 and the related study of hymnographical texts in schools;28
• The composition of new hymns and, more generally, liturgical poems29 that de-
serve fresh investigation in all respects, from their metrical characteristics and
manuscript transmission, to their liturgical, musical, and sociocultural setting.
Suggestions for Further Reading
A series of recent surveys of Byzantine hymnography provide good introductions to

the subject from different perspectives: D’Aiuto (2004); Frøyshov, “Greek Hymnody,”
“Byzantine Rite,” and “Rite of Jerusalem” (n.d.); Levy and Troeslgård, “Byzantine Chant”
22
See Darrouzès (1958), Follieri (1959 and 1980), with Papaioannou (2021) for the desiderata.
23
See Stathis (2014) with, e.g., Raasted (1995) and also the bibliography on kalophônia provided in the
next chapter (Martani, “Recitation and Chant,” Chapter 19).
24 See, e.g., Acconcia Longo (2014) on southern Italian eleventh- and twelfth-century Greek literature
with discussion and references also of the hymnographical production; see also Kollyropoulou (2011).
25 On hymnography and metrical inscriptions, e.g., see Patedakis (2016).
26 See, e.g., Mouriki (1973) or Constas (2016); and, specifically on illustrations of the Akathistos,
Lafontaine-Dosogne (1984), Pätzold (1989), Spatharakis (2005), Dobrynina (2017), and Paxton Sullo
(2020: chap. 2).
27 On didactic poems on a variety of subjects, see Hörandner (2008: 897); on invectives, see, e.g.,
Psellos, Kanôn against the Monk Iakobos; on this so-called para-hymnography, see further Eideneier
(1977) with Mitsakis (1990).
28 For the presence of hymnography in schooling, see Giannouli (2007: esp. 14–24) and Cesaretti and
Ronchey (2014: esp. 48*–72*) with general overviews; see also Papagiannis (2004) and Skrekas (2018).
29 Some random examples with important discussions: Follieri (1980) on the metrical calendars
of Christophoros Mytilenaios in hymnographic meters; Follieri (1967) and D’Aiuto (1994) on Ioannes
Mauropous; Polemis (1993) on kanones on St. Athanasios of Athos, one of the these in iambic meter;
Antonopoulou (2004) on a kanôn by Manuel Philes; Afentoulidou-Leitgeb (2008) on Theoktistos
Stoudites, author also of kanones in iambic, etc. See further the review in Frøyshov, “Byzantine Rite” (n.d.).
(n.d.); Conomos, “Byzantine Hymnody” (n.d.); Lauxtermann, “Greek Hymns, Metrics”

(n.d.)—to be read together with Lauxtermann (1999); Petrynko (2010: 21–50); Polemis
and Mineva (2016: 17–28); Hörandner (2017: 8–26); and Giannouli (2019). Relevant
bibliographies may be found in Petit (1926) and Szövérffy (1978–1979); cf. also Alexandru
(2006). See also Frøyshov (2020), on the history of the Hagiopolitan Office (and thus
also the history of the writing of kanones), a paper which unfortunately appeared while
this book was going to print and was therefore not taken into consideration here.
For lists of unedited hymns as well as new evidence for edited hymns, see Eustratiades
(1936–1952); Papaeliopoulou-Photopoulou (1996) with Stratigopoulos (1999); Getov
(2004; 2007: 595–618; and 2009); Tomadakis (2007–2009); Bucca (2011: 292–392); cf.
also D’Aiuto and Bucca (2013) and Bucca (2018 and 2020); for the history of printed
editions of liturgical texts, see Alexopoulos and Bilalis Anatolikiotes (2017) with fur-
ther bibliography. Three recent editions, translations, and commentaries, with rich
discussions of specific Byzantine liturgical manuscript books are: Ajjoub (2004; Sinai,
gr. 864, a ninth-tenth century Hôrologion [Book of Hours], written at the monastery
of Saint Catherine at Sinai); Spanos (2010; Lesbos, Leimonos 11, an eleventh-century
Mênaion for June); and Anderson and Parenti (2016; Harvard, Houghton MS gr. 3, a
Psalter and Hôrologion, copied in 1105, probably in Constantinople).
For brief introductions to various aspects related to Byzantine liturgical practice, see
various chapters in Chupungco (1997–2000, 5 vols.) along with Getcha (2012); see also
Papagiannes (2006). For various aspects of Orthodox hymnography and liturgical prac-
tice, the entries in the twelve-volume Θρησκευτικὴ καὶ ἠθικὴ ἐγκυκλοπαίδεια (Athens
1962–1968) as well as in the Православная Энциклопедия (“Orthodox Encyclopedia,”
Moscow, 2000–, available online at http://www.pravenc.ru) are useful. For Byzantine li-
turgical books, see the project Catalogue of Byzantine Manuscripts in liturgical context
(CBM) at: https://www.pthu.nl/cbm/. Finally, regarding Byzantine music, see the bibliog-
raphy provided in the following chapter (Martani, Chapter 19, “Recitation and Chant”).
appendix
The nine biblical Odes, with their beginning phrases in Greek:
(1) ᾨδὴ Μωυσέως ἐν τῇ Ἐξόδῳ, Ode of Moses:

ᾌσωμεν τῷ κυρίῳ, ἐνδόξως γὰρ δεδόξασται (Exodus 15:1–19)
(2) ᾨδὴ Μωυσέως ἐν τῷ Δευτερονομίῳ, Ode of Moses: Πρόσεχε, οὐρανέ, καὶ λαλήσω
(Deuteronomy 32:1–43)
(3) Προσευχὴ Ἄννας μητρὸς Σαμουὴλ, Prayer of Anna, the Mother of Samuel: Ἐστερεώθη ἡ
καρδία μου ἐν κυρίῳ (1 Samuel 2:1–10)
(4) Προσευχὴ Ἀμβακούμ, Prayer of Habakkuk: Κύριε, εἰσακήκοα τὴν ἀκοήν σου καὶ ἐφοβήθην
(Habakkuk 3:2–19)
(5) Προσευχὴ Ἠσαΐου, Prayer of Isaias: Ἐκ νυκτὸς ὀρθρίζει τὸ πνεῦμά μου πρὸς σέ, ὁ θεός
(Isaiah 26:9–20)
Sacred Song 455
(6) Προσευχὴ Ἰωνᾶ, Prayer of Jonah: Ἐβόησα ἐν θλίψει μου (Jonah 2:3–10)
(7) Προσευχὴ Ἀζαρίου, Prayer of Azariah: Εὐλογητὸς εἶ, κύριε (Daniel 3:26–45)
(8) Ὕμνος τῶν τριῶν παίδων, Song of the Three Young Men: Εὐλογητὸς εἶ, κύριε (Daniel
3:52–88)
(9) Προσευχὴ Μαρίας τῆς θεοτόκου, Prayer of the Theotokos, also known as the Magnificat
(Luke 1:46–55): Μεγαλύνει ἡ ψυχή μου τὸν κύριον—together with the so-called Benedictus,
namely the Προσευχὴ Ζαχαρίου, Prayer of Zachariah: Εὐλογητὸς κύριος ὁ θεὸς τοῦ Ισραηλ
(Luke 1:68–79).
Greek Texts Cited

Psellos, Michael, Kanôn against the Monk Iakobos = Poem 22, ed. L. G. Westerink, Michael
Psellus. Poemata. Stuttgart and Leipzig 1992.
Scholia on the Prolegomena of the Art of Grammar, ed. A. Hilgard, Scholia in Dionysii Thracis
Artem grammaticam. Leipzig 1901: 565–586. (repr. Hildesheim 1965).
Suda, ed. A. Adler, Suidae Lexicon, 5 vols. Leipzig 1928–1938 (reprint Stuttgart 1967–1971).
Typikon of the Great Church, ed. J. Mateos, Le Typicon de la Grande Église. Ms. Sainte-Croix n°
40, Xe siècle. Introduction, texte critique, traduction et notes, vols I–II. Rome 1962–1963.
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Chapter 18

(a) Non-ecclesiastical songs whose characteristic (though by no means exclusive)

Early Byzantine Hymnic Forms

Φῶς ἱλαρὸν ἁγίας δόξης ἀθανάτου Πατρός,

O gladsome light of holy glory, of the immortal Father,

Ἡ ἀσώματος φύσις τῶν Χερουβίμ

The incorporeal nature of the Cherubim

(1) Ἄγγελος πρωτοστάτης οὐρανόθεν ἐπέμφθη

(2) Βλέπουσα ἡ ἁγία ἑαυτὴν ἐν ἁγνείᾳ

An angel of the first rank was sent from heaven

(2) Seeing that she is pure, the holy woman

impression as they copy troparia as unmetrical prose. In the manuscripts, punctuation

(a) the colon arrangement;

Ὢ τοῦ παραδόξου θαύματος!

Σήμερον πιστοὶ χορεύσωμεν,

What a strange miracle!

Today, faithful, let us dance,

“Authors,” Chapter 20 in this volume.

(2) Ὁ πατὴρ τῆς μητρὸς γνώμῃ υἱὸς ἐγένετο, (second oikos)

(1) Bethlehem has opened Eden, come, let us see;

(2) The mother’s Father has willingly become her Son,

melodies and to reflect the musical performance of kontakia in the Constantinopolitan

structure for an ode of a kanôn, minus the presence of a proem.

• The incorporation of metrical calendars in hexameter and twelve-syllable verse

Suggestions for Further Reading

A series of recent surveys of Byzantine hymnography provide good introductions to

(n.d.); Conomos, “Byzantine Hymnody” (n.d.); Lauxtermann, “Greek Hymns, Metrics”

The nine biblical Odes, with their beginning phrases in Greek:

(1) ᾨδὴ Μωυσέως ἐν τῇ Ἐξόδῳ, Ode of Moses:

Greek Texts Cited

Frøyshov, S. S. R. (n.d.) “Rite of Jerusalem,” The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology.

Papagiannis, G. (2004) “Hymnographica ‘nova’ apud Su(i)dam,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift

Unterburger, K. (1994) “Aufbau und Geschichte der byzantinischen Liturgiebücher. Das

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