The World of Justinian

The Constantinople in which St. Romanos reached his maturity: the long reign of Justinian I (527–565), the Nika riots of 532 and the rebuilding of Hagia Sophia consecrated in 537, the theological ferment that followed the Council of Chalcedon, and the flourishing of a sung “cathedral” rite in which liturgical poetry like the kontakion found its place. This was an age that built the greatest church in Christendom and argued ceaselessly over the person of Christ — and it is against this backdrop that Romanos sang.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Byzantine hymnography)

An Age of Stone and Argument

The sixth-century capital of the Roman Empire was a city of roughly half a million people, the largest in the Christian world, set astride the trade and pilgrimage routes between Europe and Asia and crowded with churches, monasteries, and the shrines of the saints (Krueger, Liturgical Subjects, Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2014, ch. 1; Grosdidier de Matons, Romanos le Mélode et les origines de la poésie religieuse à Byzance, Paris, 1977, ch. 1). It was also a city of intense and public religiosity, where doctrinal controversy was not the preserve of theologians but the common talk of the streets, the circus factions, and the imperial court. Into this world the Syrian deacon Romanos brought a new kind of sung sermon, and the kontakia he composed must be read against the political and liturgical life of the capital that received them. The reign that dominates his mature years is that of Justinian I (527–565), and the references in the sources to a Romanos active in the time of “Anastasius and Justinian” place the height of his career squarely in the Justinianic age (the OCA Lives of the Saints, “Venerable Romanus the Melodist,” October 1; Grosdidier de Matons, Romanos le Mélode, 1977, ch. 1).

Justinian and the Restoration of Empire

Justinian, who came to the throne in 527 and reigned until 565, was the most ambitious of the early Byzantine emperors. He set himself to restore the old Roman world: his generals reconquered North Africa from the Vandals and much of Italy from the Goths; his jurists codified the whole of Roman law in the Corpus Juris Civilis; and he saw himself as the guardian and arbiter of Christian orthodoxy, convening councils and legislating on doctrine and worship alike (the historical narrative is given by his contemporary Procopius, Wars and Buildings; for the period as the setting of Romanos’ work see Krueger, Liturgical Subjects, 2014, ch. 1; Grosdidier de Matons, Romanos le Mélode, 1977, ch. 1). The imperial program touched the church directly: Justinian regarded the right ordering of worship and belief as part of the empire’s well-being, and the liturgical magnificence of his capital was bound up with his vision of a renewed Christian Rome.

The empress Theodora, his formidable consort, shared in the religious life of the reign, and the imperial couple appear as patrons and worshipers in the devotional world of the capital. Romanos’ kontakia were sung in the churches of this Justinianic Constantinople, and at least one tradition associates the poet with imperial favor, though the historical relationship between the hymnographer and the court cannot be established with precision (Grosdidier de Matons, Romanos le Mélode, 1977, ch. 1; Krueger, Liturgical Subjects, 2014, ch. 1).

The Nika Riots of 532

In January 532 the simmering rivalry of the circus factions — the Blues and the Greens, whose loyalties ran along social and to some degree religious lines — exploded into the Nika riots, the most dangerous insurrection of the reign. For several days the mob, chanting “Nika!” (“Conquer!”), burned much of the city center, proclaimed a rival emperor, and nearly drove Justinian from the throne; the rising was put down only by a massacre in the Hippodrome in which tens of thousands are said to have died (Procopius, Wars 1.24; the figures are reported variously by the sources and should be treated as estimates). The fires of the Nika revolt destroyed the existing basilica of Hagia Sophia, and from that destruction came the most enduring monument of the age.

Hagia Sophia, Consecrated 537

Justinian seized the opportunity of the ruined cathedral to build on a scale never before attempted. The new Hagia Sophia, the “Great Church” of Holy Wisdom, was raised in an astonishingly short span and consecrated in 537, its vast dome seeming to contemporaries to hang from heaven by a golden chain (Procopius, Buildings 1.1; for the building as the liturgical heart of the Constantinopolitan rite see Krueger, Liturgical Subjects, 2014, ch. 1). It became the cathedral of the patriarch and the stage for the most elaborate ceremonial of the Christian East, a building whose immense interior was designed for processions, antiphonal chant, and the sung services of the “cathedral” rite. The kontakion belonged to this world of monumental liturgy — though it was at the night vigils of the city’s churches, rather than at the great cathedral ceremonial alone, that Romanos’ verse-sermons found their setting (see the place of the kontakion in the rite).

The Theological Ferment After Chalcedon

The defining theological labor of the sixth century was the unresolved aftermath of the Council of Chalcedon (451). Chalcedon had defined that Christ is one person in two natures, divine and human, “without confusion, change, division, or separation” — but its formula had failed to win universal acceptance, and the empire was deeply divided between its supporters and the “miaphysite” or anti-Chalcedonian communities, strong especially in Syria and Egypt (Chalcedon 451, Definition; for the controversy as the backdrop to Romanos’ Christology see Krueger, Liturgical Subjects, 2014, ch. 1; Grosdidier de Matons, Romanos le Mélode, 1977, ch. 4). Justinian spent much of his reign trying to heal the breach — through the so-called Neo-Chalcedonian theology, the condemnation of the “Three Chapters,” and the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 — without ever fully succeeding.

This ferment is not incidental to Romanos’ poetry. His kontakia are saturated with the Christology of the period, insisting again and again on the full divinity and full humanity of the one Christ, on the wonder of the Incarnation, and on the Theotokos as the one who bore God in the flesh (see Christology and Mariology sung). Whatever the precise alignment of the poet himself in the controversies, his hymns proclaim the central mysteries that the councils sought to define, translated into the idiom of sung devotion (Grosdidier de Matons, Romanos le Mélode, Hymnes, Sources Chrétiennes 99, introduction; Lash, On the Life of Christ: Kontakia, HarperSanFrancisco, 1995, introduction). On the relation of such poetry to the conciliar tradition more broadly, see the treatment of the Church Fathers.

The Flourishing of Liturgical Poetry

The sixth century was a golden age of Greek liturgical poetry, and Romanos was its supreme figure. The kontakion — a long strophic verse-sermon, sung to a refrain, delivered during the night office — reached in his hands a perfection it would never surpass (Maas–Trypanis, Sancti Romani Melodi Cantica Genuina, Oxford, 1963, introduction; Grosdidier de Matons, Romanos le Mélode, 1977, chs. 2–3). The form drew on the Syriac homiletic tradition — the verse homily and the strophic teaching-hymn of St. Ephrem and his successors — and naturalized it in Greek for the worship of the capital (Grosdidier de Matons, Romanos le Mélode, 1977, ch. 5; see the genre of the kontakion). This was poetry made for performance and instruction at once: it carried the narrative of Scripture and the doctrine of the Church to a worshiping congregation in a form they could follow, remember, and join in through the refrain.

The flowering of this poetry belongs to the same impulse that raised Hagia Sophia: a confidence that the worship of God should be clothed in the highest art the age could produce, and that the great mysteries of the faith were best taught not by argument alone but by beauty. The cathedral rite, the monumental church, and the sung sermon were of a piece.

The Sung Cathedral Rite

The liturgical setting of Romanos’ work was the cathedral or “sung” rite of Constantinople — the asmatike akolouthia, the order of services as celebrated by the secular (non-monastic) clergy of the Great Church and the city’s other major sanctuaries, with their processions, antiphons, and elaborate chant (Krueger, Liturgical Subjects, 2014, ch. 1; on the rite generally see the Divine Liturgy and liturgical life). The kontakion had its home in the night vigil (pannychis) of this rite, where, after the readings, the cantor would deliver the long sung sermon from the ambo, the congregation answering with the refrain (Grosdidier de Matons, Romanos le Mélode, 1977, ch. 2; see the place in the rite). When, centuries later, the monastic-influenced services came to dominate Byzantine worship, the full kontakion was largely displaced, and only its opening strophe and first stanza survived in the books we use today (see the surviving fragments). But in the sixth century it was a living and central act of worship — and it is to the sung cathedral rite of Justinian’s Constantinople that Romanos belongs.

References

Paul Maas and C. A. Trypanis, Sancti Romani Melodi Cantica Genuina, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963.
José Grosdidier de Matons, Romanos le Mélode et les origines de la poésie religieuse à Byzance, Paris: Beauchesne, 1977.
José Grosdidier de Matons, Romanos le Mélode, Hymnes, Sources Chrétiennes 99, 110, 114, 128, 283, Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1964–1981.
Derek Krueger, Liturgical Subjects: Christian Ritual, Biblical Narrative, and the Formation of the Self in Byzantium, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.
Archimandrite Ephrem Lash, On the Life of Christ: Kontakia, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995.
Procopius of Caesarea, Wars and Buildings, ed. and trans. H. B. Dewing, Loeb Classical Library.
Council of Chalcedon (451), Definition of Faith.
Orthodox Church in America, Lives of the Saints: “Venerable Romanus the Melodist,” October 1, oca.org.