The Sweet-singer

  • Today is the com­mem­o­ra­tion day of St. Romanos the Melodist — also called St. Romanos the Sweet-singer. I think his story is near and dear to every chanter and choir-singer, and I’ll reprint it below (via the OCA site). By the way, if you ever won­dered where the church hymns called “kon­takia” (sin­gu­lar “kon­takion”) orig­i­nated, you’ll want to check this out as well. You can think of St. Romanos this Christ­mas when we sing,

    ” Today the vir­gin gives birth to the tran­scen­dent one,
    And the earth offers a cave to the unap­proach­able one.
    Angels, with shep­herds, glo­rify Him.
    The wise men jour­ney with the star,
    Since for our sake the eter­nal God was born as a lit­tle child!”

    Because that’s one of St. Romanos’ kon­takia, com­posed over a thou­sand years ago. Read on …

    stromanos.jpgSaint Romanus the Melodist was born in the fifth cen­tury in the Syr­ian city of Emesa of Jew­ish par­ents. After mov­ing to Con­stan­tino­ple, he became a church sac­ristan in the tem­ple of Hagia Sophia. The monk spent his nights alone at prayer in a field or in the Blach­er­nae church beyond the city.

    St Romanus was not a tal­ented reader or singer. Once, on the eve of the Nativ­ity of Christ, he read the kathisma verses. He read so poorly that another reader had to take his place. The clergy ridiculed Romanus, which dev­as­tated him.

    On the day of the Nativ­ity, the Mother of God appeared to the grief-stricken youth in a vision while he was pray­ing before her Kyri­o­tissa icon. She gave him a scroll and com­manded him to eat it. Thus was he given the gift of under­stand­ing, com­po­si­tion, and hymnography.

    That evening at the all-night Vigil St Romanus sang, in a won­drous voice, his first Kon­takion: “Today the Vir­gin gives birth to the Tran­scen­dent One…” All the hymns of St Romanus became known as kon­takia, in ref­er­ence to the Virgin’s scroll. St Romanus was also the first to write in the form of the Oikos, which he incor­po­rated into the all-night Vigil at his places of res­i­dence (In Greek, “oikos”).

    For his zeal­ous ser­vice St Romanus was ordained as a dea­con and became a teacher of song. Until his death, which occurred about the year 556, the hierodea­con Romanus the Melodist com­posed nearly a thou­sand hymns, many of which are still used by Chris­tians to glo­rify the Lord. About eighty survive.


    Related posts:

    1. The scary Mary prayer

    October 1st, 2007 | Grace | 3 Comments |

3 Responses and Counting...

  • Mimi 10.01.2007

    I love the hagiog­ra­phy of St. Romanos. I also like the trans­la­tions of his appela­tion, “sweet mouthed” and a Russ­ian friend told me what it was in Russ­ian, but I can’t remem­ber — was it sweet mouthed?

    Any­way, Holy St. Romanos, pray to God for us.

  • E Rica

    St. Romanos is one of my very favorite saints.

  • Grace

    Yep, he’s one of my favorites, too. I missed his day the last two years, and wanted to blog about him in case any­one hadn’t heard the story.

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