The Damascene and the Canon

The canon at its height and its ordering into the books: St. John of Damascus and his foster-brother St. Cosmas of Maiuma at Mar Saba — the Paschal canon and the contested Octoechos — and the Studite hymnographers of Constantinople, St. Theodore the Studite and St. Joseph the Hymnographer, who shaped the Triodion and filled the daily books.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Byzantine hymnography)

Overview

If St. Andrew of Crete stands at the beginning of the canon’s classical age, St. John of Damascus and St. Cosmas of Maiuma stand at its summit, and the Studite hymnographers at the point where the whole corpus was gathered, ordered, and carried into the received books of the Church. The first file of this section treats the two foster-brothers of Mar Saba — John’s Paschal canon (the “Queen of Canons”), the festal and iambic canons, the funeral idiomela, and the genuinely contested attribution of the Octoechos, where the traditional ascription and the scholarly picture must be held apart honestly. The second file treats the ninth-century Studites — Theodore the Studite and his circle, who reformed the liturgy and shaped the Lenten Triodion, and Joseph the Hymnographer, the most prolific hymnographer of the tradition, whose canons and theotokia fill the daily books (with the two Josephs carefully distinguished).

Files

File	Description
john-of-damascus-and-cosmas.md	John of Damascus and Cosmas of Maiuma; the Paschal canon; the festal and iambic canons; the funeral idiomela; the Octoechos attribution held both ways
the-studite-hymnographers.md	Theodore the Studite and the Triodion; Joseph the Hymnographer and the daily books; the two Josephs distinguished

See Also

• Romanos and the Kontakion — the canon that displaced the kontakion, and the Great Canon
• The Octoechos and the Eight Tones — the book John is traditionally credited with
• St. John of Damascus — the poet’s life and wider corpus