The Poet as Preacher

Romanos’s kontakia are sermons in verse: chanted from the ambo in the homily’s place after the Gospel, they teach, exhort, and move a congregation exactly as a preacher’s prose would, but with the added power of metre, refrain, and dramatic dialogue. Heir at once to the Greek homiletic tradition of John Chrysostom and to the Syriac verse-homily, Romanos draws his hearers into the sacred story by giving voice to its characters and addressing the assembly directly, making catechesis a shared, sung event.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Byzantine hymnography)

The Kontakion as Homily

The kontakion is, in its essential character, a homily — a sermon — that happens to be cast in metre and sung. It occupied the homily’s liturgical place, chanted from the ambo after the reading of the Gospel, and it did the homily’s work: expounding the scriptural lesson of the day, drawing out its doctrine, and applying it to the lives of the hearers (Wellesz, A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography, 1961, 179–181; Krueger, Liturgical Subjects, 2014, 67–105). Where a preacher in prose would explain and persuade, Romanos explains and persuades in verse — and so the genre is rightly called a verse-homily or sung sermon, not merely a hymn in the modern devotional sense (Grosdidier de Matons, Romanos le Mélode, 1977, 16–48; Lash, On the Life of Christ: Kontakia, 1995, introduction).

This homiletic identity is the key to reading Romanos. His poems paraphrase and dramatise a biblical narrative — the Nativity, the Presentation, the Passion, the Resurrection, and the rest — but always with a teaching and exhortatory purpose; the story is told in order to instruct and move the congregation (Krueger, 2014, 67–105; Carpenter, Kontakia of Romanos, 1970, vol. 1). The kontakion thus stands within, not apart from, the preaching office of the Church (see the place in the rite and the homily in the Divine Liturgy).

Rhetoric and Dramatic Technique

Romanos’s most distinctive instrument as a preacher is dramatisation. Rather than discoursing about a Gospel scene, he enters it and lets its figures speak: the Mother of God converses with the Magi in the Nativity kontakion (see Today the Virgin), Mary and Joseph debate, the women come to the tomb, the penitent and the proud are given speeches of their own (Krueger, 2014, 67–105; Carpenter, 1970, vol. 1; Grosdidier de Matons, 1977, 159–198). This technique — ethopoeia, the rhetorical art of composing speech in character — was a staple of the Greek schools, and Romanos turns it to homiletic ends, using invented dialogue to unfold the meaning that the terse Gospel text leaves implicit (Krueger, 2014, 67–105).

The dramatic method gives his sermons their vividness and their psychological depth. By voicing the wonder, the doubt, the joy, or the repentance of the biblical actors, Romanos makes the doctrine concrete and felt rather than merely stated; the listener learns who Christ is by overhearing his Mother marvel at him, and learns what repentance is by hearing a sinner’s own words (Krueger, 2014, 67–105; Carpenter, 1970, vol. 1). To this he joins the full apparatus of late-antique rhetoric — antithesis and paradox, apostrophe, rhetorical question, vivid description (ekphrasis), and the relentless heaping-up of imagery — all marshalled to hold attention and drive a point home (Grosdidier de Matons, 1977, 159–250; Carpenter, 1970, vol. 1).

Drawing the Congregation In

Romanos preaches not at his hearers but with them, and his form is built to involve them. The most direct means is the refrain: the ephymnion sung by choir or congregation at the close of every strophe makes the assembly the preacher’s respondent, so that the sermon advances as an exchange between the soloist’s narration and the people’s repeated confession (Wellesz, 1961, 181–183; Krueger, 2014, 29–66; and see the genre). The refrain is chosen to crystallise the lesson — “a little Child, God before the ages” in the Nativity hymn — so that the congregation, simply by singing it, rehearses the very doctrine being taught.

Romanos reinforces this with frequent direct address and exhortation. He turns from narration to speak to the congregation in his own voice — “Come, let us…”, “Let us behold…”, “Why do you marvel?” — summoning them to look, to wonder, to repent, to rejoice (Krueger, 2014, 67–105; Carpenter, 1970, vol. 1). At times he merges the worshippers with the figures of the story, so that “we” stand among the shepherds at the cave or the women at the tomb; the distance between the ancient event and the present assembly collapses, and the sermon becomes a present participation rather than a report of the past (Krueger, 2014, 67–105). This is preaching designed to form its hearers — to make them, in Derek Krueger’s phrase, liturgical subjects shaped by the story they sing (Krueger, 2014, 1–28, 67–105).

In the Homiletic Tradition

Romanos stands consciously within the great tradition of Christian preaching. On the Greek side, his nearest kin is St John Chrysostom and the Antiochene homiletic manner — the same concern to expound Scripture plainly, to apply it morally, and to move the hearer to repentance and amendment of life (Grosdidier de Matons, 1977, 16–48; Carpenter, 1970, vol. 1; and see St John Chrysostom). Romanos’s exhortations, his moral urgency, and his appeal to the ordinary worshipper place him recognisably in this line of the preaching Fathers (see the Church Fathers).

But his decisive inheritance is the Syriac verse-homily. Behind the kontakion stand the memra, the metrical sermon, and the madrasha, the teaching-hymn with its congregational refrain, the genres associated above all with St Ephrem the Syrian (Grosdidier de Matons, 1977, 16–27; and see St Ephrem the Syrian). From the memra Romanos took the very idea of preaching in verse — the homily as metrical narrative — and from the madrasha the strophic, refrain-bearing form that lets the people share in the proclamation (Grosdidier de Matons, 1977, 16–27; Wellesz, 1961, 184–185). His Syrian origin (he came to Constantinople from Emesa by way of Beirut) makes this descent biographical as well as formal: he carried the homiletic poetry of his homeland into the Greek cathedral rite (Grosdidier de Matons, 1977, 159–198; see from Emesa to Constantinople).

Verse-Homily and Prose-Homily

It is worth setting Romanos’s sung sermon directly beside the prose homily that was its rival and its kin. The classic Greek homily of the fourth century — the expository preaching of St John Chrysostom on the Gospels and Epistles, or the festal orations of St Basil the Great and the Cappadocians — proceeded as continuous rhetorical prose: a passage of Scripture taken up, expounded clause by clause, moralised, and applied, delivered as a single spoken discourse to a seated or standing congregation (Grosdidier de Matons, 1977, 16–48; and see St John Chrysostom and the Church Fathers). Romanos does the same work by other means. Where Chrysostom argues in periods, Romanos argues in strophes; where the prose preacher’s structure is the logical sequence of his exposition, Romanos’s structure is the fixed metre, the acrostic, and the returning refrain (Wellesz, 1961, 179–186; Krueger, 2014, 67–105).

The differences are differences of medium with real pastoral consequences. The prose homily could be more discursive, more analytical, more capable of sustained doctrinal argument; the verse-homily was more memorable, more participatory, and more easily carried home in the mind, because it was sung, patterned, and punctuated by a refrain the people themselves voiced (Wellesz, 1961, 179–186; Krueger, 2014, 29–66, 67–105). Romanos’s nearest formal models lay not only in this Greek prose tradition but in the Syriac verse-homily of St Ephrem (see In the Homiletic Tradition above); yet in function — expounding the day’s mystery, pressing it on the conscience of the hearer — he and Chrysostom are doing one thing, and the kontakion is rightly read as the cathedral homily in another key (Grosdidier de Matons, 1977, 16–48; Krueger, 2014, 67–105).

The Preacher’s Signature: The Acrostic and the Humility Topos

Romanos does one thing no prose preacher could: he writes his own name into the fabric of the sermon. Down the initial letters of the successive strophes runs an acrostic, and the formula it most often spells is τοῦ ταπεινοῦ Ῥωμανοῦ — “of the humble Romanos” (Grosdidier de Matons, 1977, on the acrostic-signature; Maas–Trypanis, Sancti Romani Melodi Cantica, 1963–1970; and see the genre). The device is at once a craftsman’s mark guaranteeing the integrity and order of the strophes, and a confession. The chosen epithet, ho tapeinos, “the humble” or “the lowly,” is not idle self-description but a deliberate enactment of the monastic and biblical humility topos: the preacher names himself only to abase himself, claiming the work as that of a lowly servant and, by implication, referring its real power to God rather than to his own art (Grosdidier de Matons, 1977; Krueger, 2014, 1–28, 159–188).

This hidden signature dovetails with the tradition of the gift of song received from the Theotokos (see the Theotokos and the scroll): the poet who signs himself “the humble” is the same who, in the legend, could not sing until the Mother of God gave him the charism. The acrostic thus carries, in two words threaded down the margin of the hymn, the whole theology of the Christian poet — that he is a commissioned servant, not a self-made artist — while also quietly authenticating the text for the singers who would copy and perform it (Krueger, 2014, 1–28, 159–188; Grosdidier de Matons, 1977).

The Pastoral and Catechetical Function

The end of all this art is pastoral. The kontakion was a chief means by which the doctrines of the faith — the Incarnation, the Theotokos, the Resurrection, the call to repentance — were taught to the ordinary faithful of Constantinople, many of them unlettered, in a form they could hear, follow, and join (Krueger, 2014, 67–105; Wellesz, 1961, 179–181). In an age when councils were defining Christology in technical terms, Romanos translated that doctrine into vivid story and singable refrain, making the high theology of the Church accessible to the people in the night vigil (Carpenter, 1970, vol. 1; Krueger, 2014, 67–105; and see the theology of repentance).

His kontakia thus served as catechism in song. They instructed the assembly in the meaning of the feast being celebrated, set the day’s mystery within the whole sweep of salvation history, and pressed each hearer toward repentance, faith, and worship (Krueger, 2014, 67–105; Grosdidier de Matons, 1977, 159–250). The dramatic dialogues, the direct appeals, and the shared refrain were not ornament but pastoral strategy: they were how a preacher with no pulpit but the ambo and no text but a sung poem could teach, move, and form a whole congregation at once (Krueger, 2014, 1–28, 67–105). In Romanos the office of the preacher and the gift of the poet are one.

This pastoral aim must be measured against the realities of the audience. The congregation of a sixth-century Constantinopolitan vigil was overwhelmingly non-literate in the modern sense: most could not read the Scriptures or the conciliar definitions for themselves, and access to the content of the faith came chiefly through what was heard and sung in church (Krueger, 2014, 67–105; Wellesz, 1961, 179–181). In such a setting the sung verse-sermon was a peculiarly powerful teaching instrument. A doctrine delivered as a memorable refrain, fixed in a recurring melody and rhythm, and dramatised through the speech of familiar biblical figures, could lodge in the memory and be carried out of the church and back the next day in a way that a single hearing of expository prose might not (Krueger, 2014, 29–66, 67–105). Romanos’s form is, in this light, a deliberate solution to the catechetical problem of his age: it makes the high Christology that the councils had hammered out in technical Greek singable by ordinary people, so that the congregation rehearses orthodoxy by participating in the hymn (Krueger, 2014, 67–105; and see the theology of repentance).

References

Krueger, Derek. Liturgical Subjects: Christian Ritual, Biblical Narrative, and the Formation of the Self in Byzantium. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.
Grosdidier de Matons, José. Romanos le Mélode et les origines de la poésie religieuse à Byzance. Paris: Beauchesne, 1977.
Grosdidier de Matons, José (ed., trans.). Romanos le Mélode, Hymnes. Sources Chrétiennes 99, 110, 114, 128, 283. Paris: Cerf, 1964–1981.
Carpenter, Marjorie (trans.). Kontakia of Romanos, Byzantine Melodist. 2 vols. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1970.
Lash, Ephrem (trans.). On the Life of Christ: Kontakia. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995.
Wellesz, Egon. A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961.
Maas, Paul, and C. A. Trypanis (eds.). Sancti Romani Melodi Cantica. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963–1970.