Liturgical emotions in Byzantine hymns: Reimagining Romanos the Melodist's On the Victory of the Cross (original) (raw)
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St Gregory of Nyssa’s allegorical interpretation of the Song of Songs Christianised the Stoic ideal of apatheia and spiritualised the erotic textuality of the Canticle. Nevertheless, far from eschewing all emotion, his hermeneutics paved the way for a transfiguration of the passions as a concept and the emergence of an affective mysticism in Byzantine hymnography. Unlocking the text’s spiritual sense, Gregory analogously read the lovers’ impassioned utterances as embodying a passion transcending earthly corporeality and touching divine eros. As allegory delves into the spiritual meaning of the Shulammite and her lover, human passion is anagogically immersed in divine passion and the mystical knowledge of the eschaton. This paper investigates the significance of Gregory’s In Canticum Canticorum for the history of emotions in Byzantium by examining its affinity with hymnography. It will particularly explore the nuptial metaphor in the Akathist Hymn and the transformation of passion in an epektasis of desire in St Romanos the Melodist’s kontakion on the harlot.
Hymns, Homilies and Hermeneutics in Byzantium
Brill, 2020
These papers explore the literature of Byzantine liturgical communities and provide a window into lived Christianity in this period. The liturgical performance of Christian hymns and sermons creatively engaged the faithful in biblical exegesis, invited them to experience theology in song, and shaped their identity. These sacred stories, affective scripts and salvific songs were the literature of a liturgical community – hymns and sermons were heard, and in some cases sung, by lay and monastic Christians throughout the life of Byzantium. In the field of Byzantine studies there is a growing appreciation of the importance of liturgical texts for understanding the many facets of Byzantine Christianity: we are in the midst of a liturgical turn. This book is a timely contribution to the emerging scholarship, illuminating the intersection between liturgical hymns, homiletics and hermeneutics.
Book Review of Andrew Mellas Liturgy and the Emotions in Byzantium
Journal of the International Society for Orthodox Church Music, 2020
There is a popular perception amongst the Orthodox that emotion has no place in liturgy, though this is something that is, in turn, almost completely undermined by instinctively emotional reactions to liturgical music of various kinds, to hymnography, to homiletic discourse and, indeed, to aspects of liturgical ritual itself (I am thinking, for example, of the burial procession of Christ on Holy Friday). This remarkable book seeks to understand compunction as a "liturgical emotion", enacted through embodiment precisely through chanted hymnology as mystagogy. In order to do this, Andrew Mellas, who is Senior Lecturer in Byzantine Studies at St Andrew's Theological College, Sydney, concentrates on hymns for Great Lent and Holy Week by Romanos the Melodist, Andrew of Crete and Kassia the nun. It is divided into five chapters and a conclusion, three of the chapters dealing with each of these hymnographers systematically and prefaced by a substantial introduction and a discussion of "The Liturgical World of Compunction". The Introduction is neatly sparked by a quotation from St Basil the Great concerning the way in which compunction is given or withheld, and there follows a clearly-written and often revelatory appraisal of the way in which the theme has been dealt with by other scholars. Particularly important, it seems to me, is Mellas's acknowledgement that "(…) I eschew Hinterberger's methodology, which approaches emotions in Byzantium as 'ideational' constructs rather than embodied phenomena" (p. 15), since this is a foundational aspect of the book's aims and scope. There is a very pungent section on the limitations of much scholarship on hymnography which ought to be read by anyone venturing
This paper looks at an aspect of early Byzantine popular involvement with hymnody which is massively overlooked. It sets out to highlight the contexts of unease like theological disputes, urban violence between dogmatic factions or contentions around liturgical practices in which hymns had a surprisingly large part to play. The paper also discusses how hymns were engaged by devotees of healing cult in 6th-7th cc. Constantinople. Besides, it briefly touches on the issue of popularity of Romanos' kontakia in this context.
Re-)modelling religious experience: some experiments with hymnic form in the imperial period
Lived Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean World, 2020
Religious experience has been the topic of many different theoretical approaches. This paper starts from the premise that subjective individual experience is communicable only in terms of locally-available schemes, primarily linguistic, and thus ignores somatic signs such as ecstasy or frenzy. In the case of Greco-Roman Antiquity, this involves recourse to literary sources. The paper uses three Greek hymns of the imperial period, all of them experimental by comparison with "classical" models, to infer what we may call requisite rather than subjective experiences on the part of audiences. The hymns chosen are Mesomedes' Hymn to Isis (no. 6 Regenauer), the Orphic hymn to the Nymphs (no. 51 Ricciardelli) and the hymn to "Apollo" in PGrMag VI 30-38. The suggestion is that rhetorical analysis enables us to gain a mediated idea of the contrasting responses ideally evoked in the course of ritualized performance.
Creating Liturgically: Hymnography and Music, 2017
This paper explores the significance of compunction as a liturgical emotion in the Great Kanon of Andrew of Crete. It will consider the textual, musical and performative dimensions of the Great Kanon alongside its liturgical context in Byzantium. An important element of this investigation will be reimagining—to the extent possible—the historical performance of Andrew’s text within the Byzantine rite. After all, the Byzantines experienced hymnography as a liturgical event where sacred space, soundscape, ‘lightscape’, movement, gesture, scent and taste were infused with meaning. Hymnody and ritual embodied and mobilised godly passions amidst the mystagogy of the liturgy.