ON ST. ROMANUS THE MELODIST, DEACON AND CONFESSOR, AT CONSTANTINOPLE,
AT CONSTANTINOPLE.
About the year D.
SYLLOGE
From the Menologies and other Fasti, chiefly of the Greeks.
Romanus the Melodist, deacon, Conf., at Constantinople. (S.)
BY C. B.
The Menology which Sirleto rendered from Greek into Latin, the Typicon of St. Sabas, The memory of the Saint in the sacred fasti; the Menaea, and almost all the other sacred Fasti of the Greeks, both printed and manuscript and kept with us, announce today St. Romanus the deacon, and on account both of the abundance and the elegance of the hymns composed by him, they for the most part adorn him with the title of Melodist or Poet or another equivalent. Ferrari in the General Catalogue joined himself to the Greeks, and most recently Chastelain in the Universal Martyrology, so that it may seem a wonder that the Most Eminent Baronius, although he carried over many others from the praised Menology of Sirleto into the Latin Fasti, nevertheless did not think our Saint should be inserted into the Roman Martyrology. By what reason that most learned man was induced so to judge I altogether do not know: whatever it may be, until, brought forward into the open, it be recognized as firm and solid, I for my part would not pass over Romanus the Melodist, whom I find reckoned among the Saints with the highest consent in so many sacred Fasti, and whom the things to be said below will show to have been formerly honoured with ecclesiastical cult, and to be honoured even today by the orthodox of the Greek rite.
[2] Therefore what I have found written about the Saint here and there I gather into one, this is placed by Ferrari at Beirut, and, some annotations being premised, I subjoin the elogium from the Menaea, with which the Basilian Menology, as it exists in Greek, agrees almost altogether, so that the same which will be said of the former must be understood as said of the latter also. Ferrari, just praised, in the General Catalogue ineptly places the memory of St. Romanus at Beirut, which is a maritime city in Phoenicia, a province of Syria, doubtless solely because in the Greek Fasti he is read to have been a Deacon of the church of Beirut; for nothing else occurs which could have induced him to this opinion, since the holy Confessor was neither born nor died at Beirut, nor furthermore is anything had from any monuments for his particular cult in the said city. Chastelain had followed Ferrari in the Universal Martyrology, but afterwards, in the Supplement to the same Martyrology, instructed with better knowledge, he rightly recorded the commemoration of the Saint at Constantinople, where he exchanged this mortal life for a happy and immortal one, and was endowed, as will become plain from what is to be said, with the cult proper to the Saints.
[3] his homeland, however, is wrongly placed at Messene in the Peloponnese; Nor does Ferrari assign by hallucination only the memory, but also the homeland of St. Romanus, whom he asserts in the annotations to the General Catalogue to have been born at Myssena in the Peloponnese. To establish this error he cites Greek tables, but which or of what kind they are he does not declare. Certainly no tables of the Greeks which I have seen set the native soil of St. Romanus in the Peloponnese, nor also, as far as I judge, would Ferrari have set it, had he but seen the elogium of the Saint in the printed Menaea; for this assigns both the city and the region of Romanus's birth clearly in these words: Ὧυτος ὁ ἐν ἁγίοις Ῥωμανὸς ὑπῆρχεν ἀπὸ Συρίας ἐκ τῆς ἐμεσηνῶν πόλεως. This saint Romanus was from Syria, from the city of Emesa. The Sirletian Menology, with which the tables cited by Ferrari are perhaps either the same or contain the same things, only affirms that the Saint sprang from the city of Emesa, no mention being made of his native region, namely Syria. Hence I suspect it came about that Ferrari strayed by so great an interval from the true homeland of St. Romanus: for when he saw from the Greek tables that the Saint was born in the city of Emesa, but knew no city by the name of Emesena, he thought that in the Sirletian Menology or other Greek tables rendered into Latin Emesena had been erroneously written for Myssena, and therefore that the Saint was born at Myssena in the Peloponnese. Further, Emesena is an adjective from the substantive noun Emesa, by which the city which gave St. Romanus to the world is found called, although, as can be seen in Baudrand and Ortelius, it also obtains other names differing slightly both from this and from one another.
[4] [the exercises of piety, and his dwelling in the church sacred to the Mother of God,] These things being annotated, I proceed to the pious manner of life of the Saint. The elogium to be given from the Menaea relates that St. Romanus was ordained deacon of the church of Beirut, and that when afterwards, in the time of the emperor Anastasius, he had come to Constantinople, he devoted himself wholly to the exercises of piety in the church sacred to the Mother of God, in which also, or rather in a building contiguous to that church, it hints in not obscure words that he dwelt (in which sense the dwelling in the church is to be understood). Whence you may not undeservedly gather that the Saint probably also discharged some office by reason of which, besides the burdens annexed to the diaconate, he bore in addition the care of guarding the said church. For formerly it was customary in more than one place that the guardians of churches dwelt in buildings contiguous to the church which they had received to guard, wherefore also the Greeks called them παραμοναρίους or προσμοναρίους, and the Latins mansionarii, which the curious reader will find confirmed at more length in Du Cange, in Constantinopolis Christiana, book 3, page 75.
[5] The church sacred to the Mother of God, in which the Saint is narrated to have dwelt at Constantinople built by Cyrus the consul. and to have given himself to piety, was built from the foundations by Cyrus, consul and praetorian prefect, whose varied fortune Theophanes transmitted to posterity in the Chronographia, page 83, in the time of Theodosius the younger, on the testimony of Simocatta, book 8, chapter 8, and Codinus, On the Origins of Constantinople, page 54, which for brevity's sake I shall therefore henceforth name the church of Cyrus. Further, this notice brought it about that I judged these Greek words of the elogium to be given, ἐν τῷ ναῷ … ἐν τοῖς κύρου, should be interpreted by these Latin ones: in the church … built by Cyrus; for besides that this interpretation has its foundation in the praised historians, no reason occurs from elsewhere why it should be rejected, attention being paid also to the idioms of the Greek language, τὰ κύρου and ἐν τοῖς κύρου, of which the first, as is known to those skilled in the Greek language, signifies in a very usual locution the possessions or works of Cyrus, and the second that thing or those things which are numbered among the possessions or works of Cyrus; and since it is necessary that that should have been made by Cyrus which is deservedly reckoned among the works of Cyrus, there is also nothing on this side which is opposed to the interpretation given. I did not wish, after the example of the interpreter of the Basilian Menology, to render the aforesaid Greek words by these Latin ones, in the church … in the house of Cyrus; for besides that the locution is inelegant, other reasons militate against an interpretation of this kind, which being omitted for brevity's sake, I pursue what I have begun.
[6] Not only did the Saint assiduously devote himself by day to the divine offices in the church of Cyrus, Nocturnal vigils at the Blachernae; but he sometimes also chose another field for exercising piety by night as well, so as to satisfy the supreme ardour of charity with which he burned towards God. The all-night vigils or nocturnal vigils, so called because the night preceding the feast day of which the vigils are made is spent sleepless in the church amid prayers and sacred chants, according to a custom usual among the Greeks, were wont to be performed only ἐν ταῖς δεσποτικαῖς ἑορταῖς, namely on the feasts dedicated to Christ the Lord and to the Blessed Virgin, as Leo Allatius teaches in dissertation 1 on the ecclesiastical books of the Greeks, who also asserts that feast days of this kind were among the same Greeks now more, now fewer, according to the reckoning of the times, and at length in the place cited enumerates them as fixed at the number twelve. The Saint therefore, as the Menaea record, in order to assist at these nocturnal vigils, which were probably not generally wont to be performed in the church in which he had fixed his seat, betook himself, if not altogether as often as they took place, at least frequently, to the church of the most holy Mother of God situated at the Blachernae, which the elogium of the Saint that exists in the Menaea also rightly calls by the name Blachernae alone. For although under this name, up to the times of the emperor Heraclius, there was understood one of the suburbs of the city of Constantinople, and afterwards, when this had been enclosed by Heraclius within its walls, one of its districts; yet the Byzantines, as Du Cange teaches in Constantinopolis Christiana, book 4, page 84, from Nicephorus Callistus, commonly called the church built to the most holy Mother of God by St. Pulcheria Augusta at the Blachernae the Blachernae, as also the author of the Alexandrian Chronicle, page 442, and some others called it.
[7] [these ought not, it seems, to have been omitted in the Sirletian Menology, as neither his dwelling in the church of Cyrus,] Further, the Sirletian Menology, although it records that the Saint lived very piously at Constantinople in the church sacred to the Most Holy Mother of God, and also was intent on Vigils, yet contains nothing from which you could openly gather either his vigils in the aforesaid church of the Blachernae or his dwelling in the church of Cyrus; the collector of the praised Menology, as far as I suspect, perhaps passed over both the latter and the former in silence because he noticed that in the Fasti which he had in his hands they were joined with one or another circumstance which he thought little likely, and therefore held the rest suspect. This suspicion is suggested by a circumstance of this kind occurring
in the Menaea, which are perhaps the Fasti seen by him; for when these relate that the Saint was wont to keep the Vigils of the Blachernae, they nevertheless add that he slept in the church of Cyrus on the very night preceding, as it appears, the Feast of the Nativity of Christ; whence it follows that he was not present at the Vigils of the Nativity of Christ at the Blachernae; and this perhaps the praised Collector judged little likely, on account of the exceptional zeal for piety and prayer, which would not have permitted the Saint, otherwise wont to frequent the Vigils of the Lord's feasts, to be absent from the Vigils of a Feast which, if not the chief among the Lord's feasts, is at least very eminent. Nevertheless nothing of great moment is had from this against the Vigils of Christ's Nativity not having been kept by the Saint, since he could have had most legitimate reasons why he should attend the other Vigils of the Blachernae, but not those of the Nativity of Christ; I subjoin one, which perhaps could have had place: since before the emperor Heraclius, who held the reins of the Eastern empire a whole century or a little later after St. Romanus, the Blachernae (Du Cange can be seen, book 1, page 41, in Constantinopolis Christiana) were not enclosed by the walls of Constantinople, within which, however, the church of Cyrus was situated, it becomes very credible that the Saint did not frequent the Nativity Vigils of Christ at the Blachernae, lest, prevented from returning into the city by night, the gates being then not open, he should be compelled to be absent from the divine offices in the church of Cyrus, which he served, which on account of the solemnity of the Feast were then at least also to be performed one or two hours before dawn. Hence it is now clear that the praised collector ought not to have been moved by the aforesaid or a similar circumstance, unless he had a more urgent reason, to wrap in silence the Vigils kept by the Saint at the Blachernae, or also his dwelling in the church of Cyrus.
[8] nor also his skill in composing kontakia received from God, But in the aforesaid Menology of Sirleto, much less still should all mention whatever have been omitted of the Saint's wonderful skill in composing kontakia, about which all the other sacred Fasti of the Greeks, even if most of them mention Romanus only very briefly, scarcely allow one to doubt by their unanimous consent. This rich vein for composing kontakia Romanus received, as it is said, from God; for when, as the Menaea narrate, to which, however, undoubted credit ought not to be given everywhere, he had been commanded by the Most Holy Mother of God Mary, appearing to him once in sleep, namely on the very night of Christ's Nativity, to swallow a paper book which she was holding out, and it seemed to him that he had most promptly obeyed, presently awakened, having ascended the ambo, he began to sing that extempore ode which is still read in the Menaea on the Nativity day of Christ, and which I here subjoin entire in Greek and Latin by way of example:
Ἡ παρθένος σήμερον τὸν ὑπερούσιον τίκτει, Καὶ ἡ γῆ τὸ σπήλαιον τῷ ἀπροσίτῳ προσάγει, Ἄγγελοι μετὰ ποιμένων δοξολογοῦσι, Μάγοι δὲ μετὰ ἀστέρος ὁδοιποροῦσι· Δί ἡμὰς γὰρ ἐγεννήθη παιδίον νέον, ὁ πρὸ αἰώνων Θεός.
The Virgin today gives birth to the supersubstantial One, And the earth offers a cave to him who cannot be approached, Angels with shepherds glorify God, The Magi with the star make their journey; For for our sake has been born a new Infant, God before the ages.
[9] Further, before I touch more fully upon this gift of kontakia conferred on the Saint by God, on account of which, the notion of a kontakion being premised, it is pleasing, lest anything remain to be investigated, to premise from Isaac Habert the genuine notion which the kontakion obtains in the ἀκολουθίᾳ of the Greeks, and therefore in the Elogium to be given from the Menaea; who in the Ἀρχιερατικῷ, or pontifical book of the Greek church, among the different significations which he attributes to the said word, also lists the following, which alone holds in our purpose, and sets it out in these words: In prayer, or in the recitation or chanting of the divine Office of the hours, the kontakion is a certain measured kind of hymn or ecclesiastical canticle, simpler and shorter than the rest, such as is proper to each Feast day: whence it is called κοντάκιον τῆς ἡμέρας, the kontakion of the day. To the kontakion, as it holds place in the ἀκολουθίᾳ or divine office, all the learned who have treated this matter commonly assign a similar notion also. But concerning the etymology of the same word, which serves to clarify the signification, there is not equal agreement among all, some deriving it from the word κοντὸς, which in the vulgar idiom means a short thing, others from κοντὸν, which also signifies a dart and a spike, as Du Cange's Glossary teaches. The Most Eminent Cardinal Quirini, bishop of Brescia, in the Diatribes of the latter part on the old Lenten Office of orthodox Greece, from page 142 to 159, has embraced in a dissertation no less learned than laborious everything he found written here and there among various authors about the etymology of the aforesaid word and worthy of note, and has added besides his own contribution; whom therefore the reader eager to know can consult, to whom, that I may not be troublesome with a longer digression, I return to the purpose.
[10] In the Menaea two little verses are set before the longer elogium, Romanus is shown to be praised in the Menaea, in which allusion is made to the kontakia or hymnodies composed by the Saint, for which he is then praised at length in several added troparia or canticles. I transcribe the little verses with a Latin interpretation.
Καὶ πρὶν μὲν ὕμνει ῥωμανὸς θεὸν λόγον· Ὕμνεῖ δὲ καὶ νῦν, ἀλλὰ καὶ σὺν ἀγγέλοις.
Before indeed Romanus celebrated the divine Word with hymns; And he celebrates him now too, but also with the angels.
Of the Troparia or canticles I here exhibit only one, in Greek likewise and Latin, which above the rest embraces the praises of the Saint for the hymnodies he composed: Ἐν θεοπνεύστοις ἄσμασι κατετράνωσας, μάκαρ, τὴν τοῦ χριστοῦ ἀπόῤῥητον θείαν οἰκονομίαν, καὶ ὕμνοις ἕστεψας πάντας, Ῥωμανὲ, τοὺς ἁγίους, μεθ᾽ ὧν φαιδρῶς ἀνύμνησας τήν ἁγνὴν καὶ παρθένον καὶ ἀληθῆ τοῦ Θεοῦ Μητέρα, πἀνσοφε πάτερ, μεθ᾽ ἧς ἡμῶν μνημόνευε παρεστὼς τῇ Τριάδι. In divinely inspired canticles thou hast made manifest, Blessed one, the divine secret Providence of Christ, and with praises, Romanus, thou hast crowned all the Saints, with whom, most wise Father, thou hast celebrated the pure and Virgin and true Mother of God, with whom, standing before the Trinity, remember us. By this troparion also, in that he is asserted to have crowned all the Saints with praises, it is sufficiently indicated that St. Romanus composed kontakia in immense number.
[11] [who, although he composed very many kontakia, is yet not the author of all those occurring in the Menaea,] The praised Cardinal Quirini, in the Diatribes cited, page 171, attributes several thousand kontakia to the Saint from these words of the Menaea: ὡς εἷναι τὸ πλῆθος τῶν ὑπ᾽ ἀυτοῦ γενομένων κοντακίων ὑπὲρ τὰ χίλια, by which I judge it is signified only that the number of kontakia composed by the Saint exceeds one thousand; for χίλια, although it is of plural number, I nowhere find among approved authors signifying by itself several thousands. Further, although Romanus is said to have written so many kontakia, not on that account are all the kontakia occurring in the ecclesiastical books of the Greeks to be referred to Romanus as their author, but most rather to be ascribed to those hymnographers whose odes they separate; and the more so because in the same place several kontakia are read composed on Saints younger than Romanus, and on solemnities instituted in the Greek church long after the death of Romanus. These things before me the Most Eminent Cardinal Quirini, often praised, annotated in almost the same words in the Diatribes cited, pages 171 and 172, who ingenuously confesses that Wangnereck, in the Prolegomena to the Pietas Mariana Graecorum, number 18, lighted the way for him. Wangnereck, however, seems to impute to the same Saint all the kontakia which are found on feasts or Saints older than St. Romanus; certainly in the Pietas Mariana Graecorum, numbers 93 and 214, he attributes to Romanus without doubting two kontakia from the Menaea, of which one is placed on XV January in the virginal cathisma between odes 3 and 4 on St. Paul of Thebes, the other on X February in the virginal cathisma after ode 3 on St. Charalampus. I do not inquire whether these two melodies, which are placed among the cathismata in the Menaea, are deservedly numbered among the kontakia; but that they are not so indubitably St. Romanus's is argued by the fact that they do not bear the name of Romanus, whereas the Saint's first kontakion, adduced above at number 8, which beyond all doubt belongs to no other hymnographer, has this title prefixed to it: Ποίημα Ῥωμανοῦ τοῦ Μελωδοῦ, the work of Romanus the Melodist.
[12] nor again is he the first inventor of that kind of hymns. But if all the kontakia were to be ascribed to Romanus which the praised Wangnereck seems to have ascribed, the opinion of Wangnereck himself and of others, who determined that Romanus was the first inventor of kontakia, would acquire some probability. But since it can deservedly be doubted whether before St. Romanus kontakia were not mixed with the prayers to be recited or chanted in church, I agree with our Raye, who in the Preliminary Treatise to volume 2 of June, On the Acoluthia of the Greek office, page XVIII, number 16, denies the invention of kontakia to St. Romanus for this reason, that the Menaea indicate indeed that very many kontakia were composed by St. Romanus; but do not indicate that they were first invented by him. He adds that the Menaea proclaim the Feast of St. Romanus thus: Μνήμη τοῦ ὁσίου πατρὸς ἡμῶν Πὡμανοῦ ποιητοῦ τῶν κοντακίων, the poet or composer of kontakia; but that they ought to have announced the Saint with the name of εὑρετοῦ, inventor, if they had wished to attribute to him the invention of kontakia. The Most Eminent Cardinal Quirini, in the Diatribe cited, page 172, candidly confesses that he has nothing to oppose here to Raye, whose opinion also he says can be confirmed from this, that Joseph the hymnographer too, namely the younger, who is said likewise to have received by miracle the faculty of composing canons, is called in certain Synaxaria ποιητὴς τῶν κανόνων, composer of canons, and yet is not on that account reputed the first inventor of that kind of hymns which are called canons.
[13] What I have hitherto handed down about St. Romanus had to be interrupted by some annotations, The Elogium from the Menaea, but now I subjoin without any interruption the entire elogium from the Menaea, rendered by me into Latin: This St. Romanus was from Syria, from the city of Emesa, deacon of the holy church of Beirut. And when in the times of the emperor Anastasius he had come to Constantinople, he dwelt in the church of the Most Holy Mother of God built by Cyrus, leading a pious life, and spending the night in the all-night vigils of the Blachernae. He kept, then, the nocturnal Vigils there, and returned again to the church built by Cyrus, where also he received the grace of composing kontakia, when the Most Holy Mother of God had appeared to him in sleep and had offered him a roll, or part of a paper, bidding him swallow it. He seemed, then, to open his mouth and swallow the paper (and it was the feast of the Nativity of Christ), and at once awakened, ascending the ambo, he began to chant: Today the Virgin gives birth to the supersubstantial One. And when he had completed kontakia of the remaining feasts, and also of illustrious Saints, so that the number of kontakia composed by him exceeds one thousand, he ended his life in peace. To this elogium Maximus of Cythera, commonly following the Menaea, adds nothing and takes nothing away.
[14] But the manuscript Constantinopolitan Synaxarium, which was Sirmond's, has the following addition: καὶ ἐτάφη ἐν τῇ ἀυτῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ, ἔντα καὶ τελεῖται ἡ αυτοῦ. σύναξις. And he (St. Romanus) *was buried in the same
church; where (namely in the church of Cyrus) his festival is also celebrated. the ecclesiastical cult, and the time about which the Saint flourished. From these things we have the ancient cult of the Saint in the church of the Mother of God at Constantinople built by Cyrus: for proving the present-day cult it does much that the Typicon of St. Sabas, the Horologion of Grottaferrata, and also the Anthologion most recently published at Venice in the year 1738, prescribe that a commemoration of the Saint be made in the ecclesiastical Office. To these is added the Specimen of the Ruthenian church always united with the holy Roman Apostolic See, printed at Rome in the year 1733, in which, in the second part, on the figured Ephemerides of the Muscovites at 1 October, Ignatius Kulczynski, monk of the Order of St. Basil the Great, a Ruthenian, procurator general and rector of SS. Sergius and Bacchus ai Monti, the author of the praised Work, opportunely for our purpose asserts that the Feast of Pokrov, or, as it is called, of the Protection of the Most Holy Mother of God, is solemnly celebrated by the Ruthenians on that day, and that he has in his Anthologion the Office with little and great Vespers, with three canons, one of the protection, another of Ananias, whose memory also is then recalled, the third of St. Romanus. For the rest, it is clear that St. Romanus flourished about the year of Christ 500, since he came to Constantinople in the time of the emperor Anastasius, who presided over the empire of the East towards the end of the fifth century and the beginning of the Sixth. The Slavo-Russian Menology rendered into Latin by the noble Lord Johan Gabriel, baron of Sparwenfeld, agrees, which affirms that the Saint lived in the year 496.