(b ?Emesa [now Homs], Syria, late 5th century; d Constantinople, after 555). Byzantine hymnographer and composer. Perhaps of Jewish descent, he was a deacon in the Church of the Resurrection in Beirut and towards the end of the 5th century went to Constantinople, where he served at the Church of the Virgin in the city’s Kyros quarter. A hymn in Romanos’s honour mentions his acquaintance with the imperial court. He may have become famous during his lifetime, since an almost contemporary papyrus fragment containing part of a well-known hymn by him has been found in Egypt. It is, however, uncertain whether he was the ‘presbyteros’ and ‘ekklēsiekdikos’ mentioned in the acts of the Synod of 536. He was canonized and is commemorated by the Eastern Orthodox Church on 1 October as the patron saint of music.
Romanos’s vita is lost, but summaries are transmitted in Byzantine synaxaria and menologia, according to which Romanos was inspired by the Virgin to write kontakia; this term was never used by Romanos himself, who described his hymns in more general terms such as ainos (‘praise’), ōdē (‘song’) or deēsis (‘prayer’). The Kontakion is a metrical sermon that was chanted during a vigil (pannychis) of the cathedral rite (asmatikē akolouthia) of Constantinople. It normally consists of between 18 and 30 metrically identical stanzas (oikoi) and a shorter preface (koukoulion) in a different metre; all the strophes are bound together by a refrain, and the initial letters of the oikoi form an acrostic. The kontakion was clearly influenced by Syriac ecclesiastical poetry and indeed may have had its origins in that genre. According to the synaxarion, Romanos wrote 1000 kontakia and is the greatest representative of the genre; only 85 attributed to him have survived, however, of which about 60 (those with his name as part of the acrostic) are considered genuine. The kontakia of Romanos treat theological matters, often in a theoretical or polemical way, but they are nevertheless vivid and passionate, owing to his comparatively simple and direct language and his use of dialogue embellished by rhetorical devices such as parallelism, oxymoron and word play. It is possible that he wrote the famous Akathistos Hymn, but its authorship has also been ascribed to Sergios, Germanos and even Photios.
The full texts of Romanos’s hymns first appear, without musical notation, in manuscripts of the 11th century, after which the number of oikoi copied diminishes rapidly to the point where only the koukoulion and a single oikos remain. With the exception of the Akathistos, the melismatic settings of the Slavonic kondakars and Byzantine psaltika are all abridged in this manner. Originally, the poems would have been recited in full during the services and, since the texts are very long, the musical settings were probably syllabic. This theory is partly based on the assumption that Romanos’s metrical system is stable and conforms to the principles of homotonia (identical stress pattern in corresponding verses) and isosyllabia (identical number of syllables in corresponding verses). However, the texts that have come down to us do not always fit into the required rhythmical pattern, and for this reason supporters of the theory, such as J.B. Pitra, Karl Krumbacher, and Maas and Trypanis, have been forced to make a number of textual alterations. Advocates of the alternative view maintain that it is the number of principal stresses in the verse that remains constant; the position of the stress and the number of unstressed syllables can vary. In this case the music (which may have been simply cantillation) could have been adapted to varying metrical patterns, and it is unnecessary for a modern editor to ‘correct’ the text for the sake of the rhythm. This position was maintained implicitly by Tomadakes and to some degree also by Zuntz.
N.B. Tōmadakēs, ed.: Rōmanou tou Melōdou hymnoi (Athens, 1952–61)
P. Maas and C.A.Trypanis, eds.: Sancti Romani melodi cantica, i (Oxford, 1963); ii (Berlin, 1970)
J. Grosdidier de Matons, ed. and trans.: Romanos le Mélode: Hymnes (Paris, 1964–81)
M. Carpenter, ed. and trans.: Kontakia of Romanos, Byzantine Melodist (Columbia, 1970–72)
E. Wellesz, ed.: The Akathistos Hymn, MMB, Transcripta, ix (1957)
K. Levy: ‘An Early Chant for Romanus’ Contacium trium puerorum?’, Classica et mediaevalia, xxii (1961), 172–5
C. Floros: ‘Fragen zum musikalischen und metrischen Aufbau der Kontakien’, Congrès d’études byzantines XII: Ohrid 1961, 563–9
G. Zuntz: ‘Probleme des Romanos-Textes’, Byzantion, xxxiv (1964), 469–534
C.A. Trypanis: ‘The Metres of Romanos’, Byzantion, xxxvi (1966), 560–623
K. Mitsakis: The Language of Romanos the Melodist (Munich, 1967)
P. Chrēstou: ‘Hē genesis tou kontakiou’, Klēronomia, vi (1974), 273–349
M. Alexiou: ‘The Lament of the Virgin in Byzantine Literature and Modern Greek Folk-Song’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, i (1975), 111–40
J. Grosdidier de Matons: Romanos le mélode et les origines de la poésie religieuse à Byzance (Paris, 1977)
O. Strunk: ‘Some Observations on the Music of the Kontakion’, Essays on Music in the Byzantine World (New York, 1977), 157–64
W.L. Petersen: ‘The Dependence of Romanos the Melodist upon the Syriac Ephrem: its Importance for the Origin of the Kontakion’, Vigiliae christianae, xxxix (1985), 171–87
W.L. Petersen: The Diatessaron and Ephrem Syrus as Sources of Romanos the Melodist (Leuven, 1985)
K. Mētsakēs: Byzantinē hymnographia, i: Apo tēn epochē tēs Kainēs Diathēkēs heōs tēn Eikonomachia [Byzantine hymnogaphy: from the New Testament period up to the Iconoclastic Controversy] (Athens, 2/1986)
S.P. Brock: ‘From Ephrem to Romanos’, Studia patristica, xx (1987), 139–51
J. Raasted: ‘Zur Melodie des Kontakions Hē parthenos sēmeron’, Cahiers de l’Institut du Moyen-Age grec et latin, no.59 (1989), 233–46
A.S. Korakidēs: Rōmanou tou Melōdou hymnos kai logos (Thessaloniki, 1990)
A. Lingas: ‘The Liturgical Place of the Kontakion in Constantinople’, Liturgiya, arkhitektura i iskusstvo vizantiyskogo mira: Moscow 1991 [Liturgy, architecture and art of the Byzantine world], ed. K.K. Akent'yev, i (St Petersburg, 1995), 50–57
E.C. Topping: Sacred Songs: Studies in Byzantine Hymnography (Minneapolis, 1997)
GUDRUN ENGBERG/ALEXANDER LINGAS