Scott Johnson: Historiography in Verse Exegesis: The Syriac Tradition and Romanos the Melode on 1–2 Kings

Several Syriac poems dealing with episodes in 1–2 Kings survive from Late Antiquity. These poems cover various stories, but scenes from the life of Elijah are most prominent. In this paper I will consider poems by Ephrem, Narsai, Jacob of Serugh, and Romanos the Melode (in Greek) in an effort to investigate how Kings was treated as a historiographical model by late antique poets in the East. This investigation focuses on how authoritative biblical texts shaped the habits of talking about the past in the Syriac tradition. These poets shared a collective memory, not least through liturgical celebration, which served their poetry both by providing content but also by framing their discourse about past events. This paper is not intended as a survey of the exegetical tradition on Kings but, instead, explores how exegetical poetry set cultural habits for claiming the biblical past in the Syriac tradition. The regular recitation of liturgical hymns meant that patterns of thinking about the past permeated into other genres of Syriac literature, such as prose exegesis and commentary, prose homiletics, epistlography, and historiography. With regard to historiography, this paper will close with a meditation on how the emergent chronicle tradition in Syriac took inspiration from both Greek ecclesiastical historical writing, represented by very early translations of Eusebius, as well as from the indigenous Syriac poetical tradition. In this fusing of horizons between poetry and historiography, specific perspectives on history and the past will be put forward as characteristic of Syriac writing in Late Antiquity.

Prelipcean Alexandru: The influence of Romanos the Melodist in the Great Canon of Saint Andrew of Crete: some remarks about the Christological Typologies.

It is known that the essential element of Christological expression of Andrew of Crete in his Great Canon is typology, which aims to identify the historical event as an actual witness, a concrete witness. The use of typology is not a new fact in Andrew's poetic work, but a takeover of his previous Fathers of the Church. Are known in Byzantine poetry the typological expressions used by Romanos the Melodist in his remarkable kontakia. But which are those typological images taken by Andrew of Crete in his fundamental work from kontakia of Romanos? The insertion of names of Adam, Abel, Joseph, Moses, Jesus Navi, Isaac, Melchizedek and events from their lives used even by Roman the Melodist have the same Christological value in the Great Canon? This is the thesis that the present study tries to answer.

Brenda Fitch Fairaday: Romanos the Melodist: Advocate of Healing, Reconciliation, and Forgiveness

This presentation will explore several aspects of St Romanos's techniques in using poetry and music to rouse the congregation to repentance and full metanoia, and question whether this is only on the personal level or whether it reflects the need for reconciliation among members of his society and in his church. The major works to be analyzed on this subject will be the kontakia On Judas, On Peter, and On the Harlot, which are clearly meant to arouse compunction.  By his combination of text and music (rhythm), Romanos seems to demonstrate his understanding of the affekt of the tones as taught by the Greek philosophers, including Boethius, who preceded him, and the much later writers on music who followed him, i.e., Thomas Mace, Claudio Monteverdi. There will be some comparison to Ephrem's combinations of rhythm and tones in developing like responses.  It will address the question of whether Romanos was consciously observing what was later codified in Law 137:  are his works meant to effect spiritual formation in the listeners (the laity) at the liturgy - because formation is otherwise lacking from the liturgy, and is his work reflective only of the penitential needs - his and his congregation's.  Are there common "healing" rhythms and tones found in his works? Does he use particular tones and rhythms to elicit specific spiritual responses?  A broad number of both spuria and genuina will be examined concerning these questions.

Georgia Frank: Singing Mary: Affective Piety in the Kontakia of Romanos the Melodist

This paper considers the role of Mary, the mother of Jesus, in the sung sermons by the sixth-century hymnographer, Romanos the Melodist. Originally performed in Constantinople at vigils held on the eve of feast days, these stanzaic hymns, or kontakia, enlivened biblical characters through inventive use of dialogue and interior monologue. Mary’s voice figures prominently in Romanos’s retelling of gospel stories about the annunciation, as well as the nativity, infancy, miracles, and passion of Christ. Building on recent studies by T. Arentzen and S. Gador-Whyte, this paper focuses on performative and affective dimensions of Mary’s voice in these biblical retellings.

Thomas Arentzen: The Dialogue of Annunciation: Germanos of Constantinople versus Romanos the Melodist

The narrative exposition of the Archangel Gabriel visiting the Virgin Mary was popular among early hymnographers and homilists. In the sixth century, the Annunciation was established as a separate feast in the Constantinopolitan calendar, and Romanos the Melodist (ca. 490 - 560) is the first author we know of to write a hymn for this new spring festival. Patriarch Germanos I (ca. 634 - 740) later wrote a strikingly dramatic homily for the same feast. What is conspicuous, however, is that even though Romanos and Germanos are counted among the giants of liturgical writing, their Annunciation works are both poorly transmitted in manuscript traditions, and scholars generally assume that these texts went out of use at an early date or were rarely performed. How can this be?
The paper will ponder this conspicuity by a comparative reading of the two compositions asking what traits they share and what may distinguish the texts as less suitable for liturgical use. Common features seem to include certain dramatic and even erotic tension. The Annunciation feast was usually celebrated during Lent. Can Romanos's and Germanos's liturgical works simply have been too amusing for public performance in a period of fasting?

Derek Krueger - The Recasting of the Divine Liturgy as a Penitential Rite in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries

Published in 565, Novella 137 of the Corpus Iuris Civilis, demanded that the anaphora of the Divine Liturgy be recited aloud, “so that the souls of those who listen may be moved to greater compunction and raise up glorification to the Lord God.”  Robert Taft notes that Law 137 is the “only Late-Antique source…to show any concern that the people hear, understand, and interiorize the anaphoral prayers,” but in fact the law codified early Byzantine clerics’ expectations about how liturgies effected the formation of self-regard among the laity. The rise of a theory that the eucharistic prayers of the early Byzantine liturgy cued a penitential response roughly coincided with the adoption of a form of the Liturgy of Basil  in Constantinople and persisted even as the anaphora of this liturgy came increasingly to be recited silently over the course of the sixth and seventh centuries.  This paper surveys additional evidence indicating that sixth- and seventh-century Greek authors expected the Eucharistic liturgy to cultivate compunction.   The works of Romanos the Melodist not only prompt penitential responses to the stories of the lectionary; they also prepare congregants’ dispositions for the Eucharist on the following morning. The introduction of new hymns—including “At Your Mystical Feast”—to liturgies for Holy Week show clerical interest in shaping the experience of the sacrament by identification with saveable sinners.  And the Hexaermeron of Anastasios of Sinai in the last decades of the seventh century speculated that there would be no need for the Divine Liturgy in the world to come: “This will be a day free of servitude, when sacrifice and liturgical service for our sins are no longer offered to God” (7.7.2).  Indeed, the Divine Liturgy was only necessary under conditions of sin and corruption.

Emmanuel Papoutsakis: Romanos the Melode and the Syriac Tradition

Romanos the Melode was born in Emesa in Syria in the end of the fifth century

and died sometime after 555. During the reign of Anastasius I (491-518), he moved to

Constantinople, where he composed his poetry in Greek and flourished under Justinian.

Undoubtedly, the area in Romanos studies where scholarly opinion has most radically

shifted since the publication of Grosdidier de Matons’ seminal monograph in 1977 is that

regarding his

be positively shown to have been familiar with the Syriac literary tradition. This problem

has been addressed notably in a monograph by the Biblical scholar William Petersen, in a

review of José Grosdidier de Matons’ book by André de Halleux, in a series of articles by

Sebastian Brock, in an article by Lucas Van Rompay and in a recent contribution by

Manolis Papoutsakis. With few exceptions, emphasis so far has been placed on simply

identifying the Syriac element in Romanos, rather than on interpreting its presence and

signification in his compositions.

In this workshop, the participants would like to take stock of the scholarship on

this area of Romanos studies; to present new literary evidence which appears to link

Romanos with the Syriac tradition and to interpret, if possible, his literary choices in

strictly historical terms; to address the problem of his reception by his Constantinopolitan

audience; to study the dialogue in the kontakia in its relationship to dialogue forms in

Syriac and other Greek compositions; and, finally, to explain how the exploration of the

Melode’s

theological background of the Eastern Roman Empire in the sixth centurysyrianité, and, more specifically, the question as to whether Romanos cansyrianité helps us understand his oeuvre better against the cultural and