Kontakion and Akathist

Whoever wrote it, the Akathist Hymn to the Theotokos is a kontakion in form — a prooimion followed by twenty-four alphabetically-acrostic oikoi closing in a refrain — and so belongs to the genre St. Romanos the Melodist brought to perfection. This file sets the Akathist beside Romanos’s kontakia to show what it shares with them and how it differs (the chairetismoi salutations, the two alternating refrains), and treats its singular fate: it is the one full kontakion still sung in its entirety, while Romanos’s own kontakia survive only as truncated stumps.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Byzantine hymnography)

The Akathist Is a Kontakion

Before any authorship question, a formal fact: the Akathist is a kontakion. It has the kontakion’s two-part architecture — an introductory prooimion (also called the koukoulion) followed by a series of metrically uniform oikoi (“houses,” i.e. stanzas), each ending in a shared refrain (ephymnion) and all built on a single melodic-rhythmic model (Wellesz, A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography, 2nd ed., Oxford, 1961). On this structural level the Akathist sits squarely inside the genre that Romanos shaped: the genre of the sung verse-sermon, a poem that is also a homily, performed by a soloist with the people answering the refrain (see The Genre). The Metropolitan Cantor Institute describes the classical kontakion exactly so — “a proemium plus up to twenty-four stanzas (oikoi), all sharing the same meter and concluding line that served as a refrain,” sung “by skilled soloists at the ambo… during vigil services,” the long scroll unrolled from the kontax that gave the genre its name (mci.archpitt.org, “Kontakia”). The Akathist’s twenty-four oikoi and its refrain-structure are a textbook instance of that form.

It also shares the kontakion’s favourite formal ornament, the acrostic. Romanos signed his kontakia with acrostics — most often τοῦ ταπεινοῦ Ῥωμανοῦ, “of the humble Romanos,” spelled down the initial letters of the stanzas (Grosdidier de Matons, Romanos le Mélode et les origines de la poésie religieuse à Byzance, Paris, 1977). The Akathist carries an acrostic too, though of a different and more abstract kind: the alphabetic acrostic, its twenty-four oikoi opening in turn with alpha through omega (Wikipedia, “Akathist”). The alphabetic acrostic is itself a known kontakarion device, so even here the Akathist stays within the genre’s repertoire while choosing one of its more formal options.

Where the Akathist Differs from Romanos’s Kontakia

The differences are as instructive as the likeness, and they are the reason the authorship question keeps recurring (treated in full in Romanos and the Akathist). Three stand out.

First, the two alternating refrains. A standard Romanos kontakion uses one refrain, a single line repeated unchanged at the close of every oikos, binding the whole hymn into one meditation (Grosdidier de Matons, 1977; Maas–Trypanis, Sancti Romani Melodi Cantica, Oxford, 1963–1970). The Akathist instead alternates two: the twelve “long” oikoi close with Χαῖρε, Νύμφη ἀνύμφευτε — “Rejoice, Bride unwedded” — while the twelve “short” oikoi close with Ἀλληλούϊα, “Alleluia” (Wikipedia, “Akathist”). This double-refrain alternation is not the manner of the authenticated Romanos corpus, and it is one of the formal features scholars cite when they question the Romanos attribution.

Second, the chairetismoi. The Akathist’s long oikoi are built around chains of salutations, each beginning Χαῖρε (“Rejoice”), addressed to the Theotokos in paired, rhyming, antithetical lines — “Rejoice, height hard to climb for the thoughts of men; Rejoice, depth hard to scan even for the eyes of angels” and dozens more, twelve couplets to a stanza (Lash, On the Life of Christ: Kontakia, 1995, and his Akathist translation; Peltomaa, The Image of the Virgin Mary in the Akathistos Hymn, Brill, 2001). This litany-of-salutations is the Akathist’s most distinctive feature and the engine of its devotional power; it is also untypical of Romanos, whose stanzas more often advance a narrative or a dialogue than accumulate a litany (see The Dramatic Dialogues). The chairetismoi echo the Gabriel’s Chaíre of the Annunciation (Luke 1:28) and the alphabet of praises grows from that greeting.

Third, the scale and balance of the structure. Romanos’s kontakia typically run to between eighteen and twenty-four oikoi of considerable length, developing a single feast or scriptural scene as a continuous sermon (Maas–Trypanis, 1963–1970). The Akathist’s twenty-four oikoi are organized into two halves — a first, “narrative” half following the Incarnation from Annunciation to the Presentation in the Temple, and a second, “dogmatic” half meditating on the mystery of the God-bearing Virgin — with the long and short oikoi alternating throughout (Peltomaa, 2001). The symmetry is more architectural, less homiletically driven, than Romanos’s habitual forward motion.

These are differences of manner within a shared genre. They do not remove the Akathist from the kontakion; they locate it as a particular, highly formalized species of kontakion — which is why scholars can simultaneously call it “a kontakion” and doubt that Romanos wrote it.

The Architecture of the Twenty-Four Oikoi

The Akathist’s design rewards a closer look, for its symmetry is exact and deliberate. The twenty-four oikoi carry a complete alphabetic acrostic: the first opens with alpha (Ἄγγελος πρωτοστάτης…) and the last with omega (Ὦ πανύμνητε Μῆτερ…), the initial letters running straight through the Greek alphabet from beginning to end (Wellesz, A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography, 2nd ed., Oxford, 1961, on the Akathistos; Peltomaa, The Image of the Virgin Mary in the Akathistos Hymn, Brill, 2001). The alphabet from A to Ω is itself a figure of totality — a praise that spans, letter by letter, the whole compass of speech — and it governs the order of the entire hymn.

Across that alphabetic frame the oikoi alternate by length and refrain. The twelve odd-numbered, “long” oikoi each unfold a chain of twelve chairetismoi — paired salutations beginning Χαῖρε, “Rejoice” — and close with the refrain Χαῖρε, Νύμφη ἀνύμφευτε, “Rejoice, Bride unwedded”; the twelve even-numbered, “short” oikoi carry no salutations and close instead with Ἀλληλούϊα, “Alleluia” (Peltomaa, 2001; Wellesz, 1961; Wikipedia, “Akathist”). Long and short thus alternate in strict succession, so that a swelling stanza of praise is answered each time by a brief stanza of doxology — a measured systole and diastole running the length of the hymn.

The twenty-four are further organised into four thematic sections of six oikoi each. The first two sections form a narrative or historical cycle following the Incarnation in the order of the Gospel — the Annunciation, the Visitation and Mary’s wonder, the Nativity, the adoration of the Magi, the Flight into Egypt, and the Presentation in the Temple. The second two form a dogmatic or theological cycle, leaving the narrative to contemplate the mystery itself: the renewal of creation in Christ, the inadequacy of human eloquence before the mystery, the Virgin as living temple and wall and refuge, and the closing plea for mercy (Peltomaa, 2001; Wellesz, 1961). The hymn thus moves from the events of salvation to their meaning, from history to dogma, with the Theotokos as the constant centre of both halves (Peltomaa, 2001).

The Standing Hymn and Its Staseis

In performance these four sections answer to the hymn’s liturgical division into staseis (“standings”). As sung in the Lenten Triodion, the Akathist is broken into four portions, one chanted at each of the first four Friday-evening Compline services of Great Lent, with the whole hymn sung complete on the eve of the Fifth Saturday, the “Saturday of the Akathist” (Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, “The Akathist Hymn and Small Compline,” goarch.org; Lash, orthochristian.com/45826.html; and see the liturgical placement above). The four-fold staseis of the rite map onto the four six-oikos sections of the text, so that the hymn’s literary architecture and its liturgical delivery are one structure seen twice.

The name itself records the manner of that delivery. Akáthistos means “not sitting”: the hymn is the one for which, by long custom, the whole congregation stands throughout, a posture of vigilant reverence sustained through the entire length of the twenty-four oikoi (Wellesz, 1961, on the Akathistos; Wikipedia, “Akathist”; orthodoxwiki.org, “Akathist”). The tradition binds this standing vigil to the deliverance of Constantinople, the occasion to which the prologue Τῇ ὑπερμάχῳ was later attached (see Romanos and the Akathist). That a hymn should take its very title from the bodily posture of those who hear it is itself a witness to the participatory, congregational character the Akathist shares with the whole kontakion genre (Wellesz, 1961; Peltomaa, 2001).

The One Full Kontakion Still Sung Whole

The Akathist’s most extraordinary distinction is liturgical, not formal: it is the only complete kontakion still sung in its entirety in the Byzantine rite (mci.archpitt.org, “Kontakia”: “The Akathist Hymn represents the sole complete kontakion still sung in Byzantine liturgy”). Every other kontakion of the classical age — including all of Romanos’s — survives in present use only as a stump (see The Surviving Fragments). The Akathist alone is still performed prooimion, all twenty-four oikoi, and refrains, as a single great act of praise.

It keeps that fullness in a fixed liturgical home. The Akathist is appointed for the Saturday of the Fifth Week of Great Lent, the “Saturday of the Akathist,” in the Lenten Triodion; in common practice the hymn is divided into four portions (“Salutations,” Chairetismoi / Stáseis) chanted on the first four Friday evenings of Lent, with the whole hymn sung on the fifth Saturday’s eve, the faithful standing — a-káthistos, “not sitting” — through its length (Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, “5th Saturday of Lent: The Akathist Hymn,” goarch.org; Lash, orthochristian.com/45826.html). The all-night standing vigil is bound in the tradition to the deliverance of Constantinople, the occasion that also attached the Τῇ ὑπερμάχῳ prologue to the hymn (see Romanos and the Akathist on the post-626 prologue).

Why This Contrast Matters

Set against the truncated survival of Romanos’s own kontakia, the Akathist’s wholeness is a window onto what was lost. When we sing only the prooimion and first oikos of the Nativity kontakion after the sixth ode of the canon, we are hearing the surviving fragment of a poem that once ran, like the Akathist, to two dozen stanzas of sustained drama and praise (mci.archpitt.org, “Kontakia”; and see The Place in the Rite for how that truncation happened). The Akathist is therefore doubly valuable: as the supreme example of the developed kontakion still in living, complete use, and as a standing illustration of the genre’s lost amplitude — a single surviving cathedral whose plan lets us imagine the ruined ones beside it. Whether or not its architect was Romanos, it is built to his order of art.

References

Wellesz, Egon. A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961. (Kontakion form: prooimion, oikoi, refrain; the Akathistos.)
Maas, Paul, and C. A. Trypanis, eds. Sancti Romani Melodi Cantica: Cantica Genuina / Cantica Dubia. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963–1970. (The authentic kontakia, their single refrains and acrostics.)
Grosdidier de Matons, José. Romanos le Mélode et les origines de la poésie religieuse à Byzance. Paris: Beauchesne, 1977. (The Romanos acrostic-signature; the genre’s conventions.)
Peltomaa, Leena Mari. The Image of the Virgin Mary in the Akathistos Hymn. The Medieval Mediterranean 35. Leiden: Brill, 2001. (Structure of the twenty-four oikoi; narrative and dogmatic halves; chairetismoi.)
Lash, Ephrem (Archimandrite), trans. On the Life of Christ: Kontakia. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1995; and “The Akathist Hymn to the Mother of God,” orthochristian.com/45826.html. (Translations of Romanos and of the Akathist; the chairetismoi.)
Metropolitan Cantor Institute. “Kontakia.” mci.archpitt.org/liturgy/Kontakia.html. (Classical kontakion form and performance; the Akathist as the sole complete kontakion still sung.)
“Akathist.” Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akathist. (Alphabetic acrostic; the two refrains “Rejoice, Bride unwedded” / “Alleluia”; long and short oikoi.)
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. “5th Saturday of Lent: The Akathist Hymn”; “The Akathist Hymn and Small Compline.” goarch.org. (Liturgical placement in the Lenten Triodion; the Salutations; the four Friday-evening staseis.)
“Akathist.” OrthodoxWiki. orthodoxwiki.org/Akathist. (The twelve long and twelve short oikoi; “not sitting”; the standing performance.)